Stories Teens Love

The nature of writing, and the nature of being young. When I think of young people writing, I return often to the movie “The...

The house is still and the streetlamp flickers outside the window. Eli turns his body left and right, kicking the blanket up and down trying to ease himself. It’s the middle of fall and the leaves are turning color. He tightly shuts his eyes with his mind loud with thoughts flying by. He glances over at the calendar, circles two words in a big red pen. Tryouts tomorrow . He takes a deep breath and pulls on the lamp string, illuminating the whole room.  He stands and walks ove

Seeing the dimpled thighs, where flesh seems to become a woman. Fifteen years old but I still suck in my breath to watch the crease of Levi's shimmy its way up my hips. A belt as uncertain as its owner. It seems to tighten around me, constricting me. Somewhere in the world or history, my mother says, somebody would find me beautiful. The cruel irony is that everything that I want is not here in the room right now. What I love is the absence. The space in photos where supermod

Sure, questless again. My umbrella on the shelf  where I never put it. I can find it, unsure, but I will, I will. My desk lamp isn’t working anymore, there’s too much oil in the thing but the drainage is screwed more. I’d say  I am terrified of every beginning I have, each restless run up that hill and the collapsing down again. I’d say take it off of me, this easiness, my pledge into the sour ridge. My word. Words. I think it’s meaningless, these signs  of life rifling throu

I had a conversation recently with someone on finding the voice, the underlying self beneath your sentences. Voice, as they described it, allowed for you to be distinct, and is something we must continuously seek: the rhythm, the cadence, the fingerprint that marks the work as yours. This point, in some ways, stands; you can hear that kind of fingerprint in many of the greats, the invisible confidence that comes from having written enough to stop flinching at your own tone. H

Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus and most lucrative franchise. I love Kojima as much as any game lover—liker, even—would love him and maybe any writer might distrust him, if only to say that I love him recklessly and, despite my better judgement, love MGS’s storyline as well. There isn’t much you need to know about the games in order to enjoy this piece to some meaningful extent; what’s necessary to divulge I will, and will try to keep brief. All this is to say th