Stories Teens Love

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

In order to make an origami star you cut a strip of paper and tie a “knot” to start. After that you bend and crease the strip of paper, entwining and interweaving the slip. Finally, you tuck the end of the paper into a previous layer and pinch the sides to form your star. In origami it is important to be precise, a quick fold of the paper is irreversible with no way to unfold the indent and smooth out the mark. The paper will never be new again, never as whole as it was when

Waiting for fruit to ripen is like waiting for a limited time reward. I placed a mango near the window where the sunlight hit it all day, hoping that it would ripen just right. I checked it daily, trusting that this time I’d finally get the timing right. But just five days later, it had gotten beyond ripened. The flesh caved in at the slightest touch, a sour and fermented scent escaping through the skin into the kitchen. It was unsalvageable–no longer fruit, just rot. The wor

I stare down the lists of engraved names, hollow letters etched out across the array of countless tall pillars. My eyes flow past each one without a second thought, endlessly scanning stories that will never be told. Entire generations of boys forgotten in the storm. I reach out and caress the cold hard metal. Strangely, I feel empty, as if time has stopped. My mind fails to feel, fails to grasp what I am reading, what I am breathing, what I am touching, what I am . Funny.  I

Sun rise flourish on cold stained stone.  Boots of man click through and through;  wake the sleepy lowlands from restless slumber, for death knocks upon the gates of first and second.  Crows fly in clouded skies, for even the sun in all glory bars the heavens, turns the blind eye  on the world she watches  on this woeful day.  Time feels heavy upon raw blades.  Curious eyes wander afar, to see what fate has in hold; from across the sea in the royal palace of another to the Pr

“I feel trapped. I’ve always felt trapped.” Telling this to the one person I trusted was a huge mistake. Even he wouldn’t understand....

When I was five, my grandmother placed a pair of chopsticks in my hands, the slender bamboo smooth against my small fingers. “These are...

I watch the wind sway, as  if it were just coming in through the door. At a restaurant,  all the lights look like stars coming from...

Autumn sparks through my eyes,  slivered fish dappled with light.  I always keep coming back  with fresh perspective to see a better...

return  to my past is not easy  it comes with a bravery i’m not quite sure i have obtained it is a journey i have chosen to make alone ...

A poem so small you could carry it anywhere, inside of your heart or pocket. Conclusions I keep jumping from the high-wire embracing on...

the stalks should have been taller  by this time of year. the seafoam  stripped beneath our chins, blank  air washes the fingernailed...

Poets share some of the first pieces they ever wrote- in their raw, organic forms. This Is What We Talk About When We Talk About Love A...

A poem so small you could carry it anywhere, inside of your heart or pocket. Unemployed  I was always afraid of the other smart girl in...

Serenity As the soft light filters through my window, I close my eyes. My ceiling fan and the children playing outside — a calm, familiar...

Anagram Poetry is a series we’ll be doing where an author contributes one poem, then re-transfigures it to create a second poem. 

I. blessing the ships that left without a trace, lonely in the keening wind II. in the silence of a mind's eye, the ghost of a ...

To have the pleasure of rearranging the future like a jigsaw puzzle,  continually imagining  things moving away from each other  and...