Lance Larsen
“Everything Is a Prayer to Something”

Lance Larsen - “Everything Is a Prayer to Something”

Poetry
Lance Larsen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently What the Body Knows (Tampa 2018). He’s won a number of awards, including a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Sewanee, Ragdale,… Read more »
Laura Todd Carns
Abercrombie’s Haunted TV and Small Appliance Repair

Laura Todd Carns - Abercrombie’s Haunted TV and Small Appliance Repair

Fiction
Laura Todd Carns is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction living near Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Hobart, Pigeon Pages, and The Washington Post, among others,… Read more »
Colleen Mayo
Ahead of the Curve

Colleen Mayo - Ahead of the Curve

Fiction
Colleen Mayo’s writing appears or is forthcoming in The Sun, Crazyhorse, The Rumpus, Hobart, The Chattahoochee Review, The Boiler, and elsewhere. Her work has received special mention for the 2019… Read more »
Scott Nadelson
Among Thorns

Scott Nadelson - Among Thorns

Fiction
Scott Nadelson is the author of seven books, most recently the story collection One of Us. His work has recently appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Best… Read more »
Will Ejzak
Backpedal

Will Ejzak - Backpedal

Fiction
Will Ejzak is a high school English teacher in Chicago, Illinois. His short story collection What to Do When You Find Him was selected by Roxane Gay as a finalist for the 2020 Flannery O’Connor… Read more »
Hannah Whiteman
Callinectes Sapidus

Hannah Whiteman - Callinectes Sapidus

Poetry
"Set in Maryland" Contest Winner Hannah Whiteman received her MFA from the University of Florida. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she teaches English. Read more »
Ed Meek
Climate Change

Ed Meek - Climate Change

Poetry
Ed Meek has had poems in The American Poetry Journal, The Sun, Plume, and The Paris Review. His new book, High Tide, is available at Aubadepublishing.com. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with… Read more »
Jeff Liao
Desire Lines

Jeff Liao - Desire Lines

Creative Nonfiction
Jeff Liao is a writer and student from New Jersey. His work appears in Ninth Letter and The Interlochen Review. He has received recognition from the National YoungArts Foundation and the U.S.… Read more »
Charlie Clark
Devil Watching as, in the Midst of Your Isolation, Your Child Insists on Opening All of Her Umbrellas

Charlie Clark - Devil Watching as, in the Midst of Your Isolation, Your Child Insists on Opening All of Her Umbrellas

Poetry
Charlie Clark studied poetry at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in The New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, Threepenny Review, West Branch, and other journals.… Read more »
Claire O’Connor
Home From the Wars

Claire O’Connor - Home From the Wars

Fiction
Claire O’Connor is an educator who has worked with students of many ages in New York, California, Idaho, Morocco, Malaysia, Greece, South Africa, and Scotland. Her stories have appeared or are… Read more »
Sari Fordham
My Father Thinks Danger Is Beautiful

Sari Fordham - My Father Thinks Danger Is Beautiful

Creative Nonfiction
Photo credit: Natan Vigna Sari Fordham teaches creative writing at La Sierra University. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Green Mountains Review, Booth, Passages North, and The Chattahoochee Review,… Read more »
Cezarija Abartis
Shakespeare. Chekhov. Love.

Cezarija Abartis - Shakespeare. Chekhov. Love.

Fiction
Photo credit: Russell Letson Cezarija Abartis has published a collection, Nice Girls and Other Stories (New Rivers Press) and stories in Baltimore Review, Bennington Review, FRiGG, matchbook,… Read more »
Robert Erle Barham
Small as This

Robert Erle Barham - Small as This

Creative Nonfiction
Robert Erle Barham is an English professor at Covenant College, and he lives with his family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  His work has appeared in Appalachian Review and River Teeth’s… Read more »
Bryana Atkinson
Sorrel

Bryana Atkinson - Sorrel

Creative Nonfiction
Bryana Atkinson is a writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a graduate student in Composition Studies. Bryana has been writing for as long as she can remember, starting with a… Read more »
Melinda Brasher
The Symbolic Cemetery

Melinda Brasher - The Symbolic Cemetery

Creative Nonfiction
Melinda Brasher spends her time writing, traveling, and hiking. She loves the smell of autumn leaves crunching and the smell of orange blossoms in spring. You can find her work in Short Circuit,… Read more »
TELEPHONE
The TELEPHONE Project

TELEPHONE - The TELEPHONE Project

Project

Remember that game you played when you were a kid? Telephone? The TELEPHONE project is a game too, but on a grand scale. This is no game of giggling kids whispering a sentence around a circle. The… Read more »
Mike Nees
Wintering

Mike Nees - Wintering

Fiction
Photo credit: Alex DiGiovanni Mike Nees lives and works in Atlantic City. He’s a case manager for people living with HIV. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Driftwood, Typehouse Literary… Read more »

Small as This

Robert Erle Barham

"Tell me a story," my son says.

It begins: “Once upon a time, when your dad was a teenager, he and two friends were riding the backroads of North Louisiana near their hometown. It was the first day of summer, and we were going too fast down a gravel road. Dan was driving. I was in the front, and Benjamin was in the back. None of us were wearing seatbelts. As we rounded a curve, the car lost traction, and we hit a ditch. The car flipped and landed in a smoking heap facing the other direction. Miraculously nobody was hurt—except Benjamin who had a tiny scratch on his cheek."

"Small as this?" my son asks, holding his fingers close together.

"Smaller than that," I say. "Then we had to walk miles and miles, all the way back to town.”

I tell it flat and not too scary, emphasizing the wonder of our safety. My son gets the moral when he repeats the tale to his mother—“They were driving too fast!”—and he stresses how small Ben’s scratch was.

Here’s what I leave out. The adolescent restlessness that prompted our drive; the violent, disorienting tumble through the car as it rolled; afterwards, the scramble to pick up our cigarettes scattered along the road. I also omit details like the grind of the gravel under our tennis shoes and the thick Louisiana heat as we walked home; my father’s buckling knees when he heard what happened.

I don’t tell my son that this story makes the past seem easily legible and that it always recalls Benjamin, years later, when I had just moved back to town. I saw him and we laughed like we were kids again. “Come ride with me sometime; I’d love to catch up,” he said. I don’t tell my son that a week later, Benjamin, who was always charming and funny and full of mirth, took his own life and left behind friends and family groping to understand his final state of mind.

These stories—the one I tell my son and the one I don’t—are about possibilities, contingencies. What if we had been driving faster? What if one of us had been thrown from the car? What if?

And what if I had gone on that ride with Benjamin? We might have driven the very same road we did as teenagers, and we might have talked about the wreck and other near misses. We might have been so caught up in reminiscence that we ran out of gas and had to walk back to town, laughing at the irony. Along the way, Ben might have confided in me, might have mentioned some isolating sadness. He might even have been consoled by our conversation, just speaking his sorrow out loud, words enough to tame the demons. After we refueled his truck and parted, he might have smiled and waved, and then driven away. Without a scratch.

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