The Space Where You Were by Nina Denison


 

It was like one of those dreams where you’re trying to reach someone in a crowd and you keep glimpsing the back of their head before they’re swallowed up by the thick humanity. The crowd is impermeable— you try elbowing your way through, but it closes in on you again and you find you haven’t advanced. You’re panicking. You have no voice. It wasn’t a dream, though, and I didn’t need to use my elbows—I just couldn’t get to you. You kept disappearing around corners, into rooms, your shadow bending all over the wallpaper and … Continue reading The Space Where You Were by Nina Denison

A Matter of Perspective by K. Douglass Hopkins

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K. Douglass Hopkins, DMV, is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2016 essay/memoir contest. I sighed as I loaded my duffle into the Trooper, reluctant to leave for a long weekend at the emergency veterinary hospital. It had been one of those perfect early spring days that, slanting now towards a soft peeper-filled dusk, had transported my mind to vanished places and long gone years. The sun, warm across my shoulders as I planted early peas, struck through the bare tree limbs onto flattened taupe grasses and crispy dead leaves. A light breeze replaced the … Continue reading A Matter of Perspective by K. Douglass Hopkins

We Always Called Him Fletcher by Barbara Conrad

global warming
 

We Always Called Him Fletcher   Never by his first name Albert, or Mr. Fletcher. He was tall as a sugar pine, skin the color of freckled walnuts, walked our whole neighborhood hauling an extension ladder from job to job, his back gospel-straight. I knew nothing beyond his easy manner, and that one summer morning when I rode with my dad to snag him from the Shell Station where out back he managed to unfold from a lean-to, tools in tow. There were easy lies about Fletcher. His thank-you-mam gratitude for a bologna sandwich served … Continue reading We Always Called Him Fletcher by Barbara Conrad

Heinz and the Hula Doll by Annette Boushey Holland


 

Annette Boushey Holland is the 1st place winner winner of Streetlight’s 2016 essay/memoir contest. My last year of elementary school, at the end of the 50s, was also the end of my family’s life in Washington D.C., where we’d lived for four whole years. My father was in the Air Force, and we moved a lot while I was growing up. This time he was transferred to a small town in Tennessee, called Tullahoma, where he was to serve as commanding general of the nearby Air Force base. The first day at my new school, … Continue reading Heinz and the Hula Doll by Annette Boushey Holland

No God or Stars by Jennifer Cox

taxotere
 

Jennifer Cox is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2016 essay/memoir contest. Until I was six I was loud and my eyes lit up and family was everyone everywhere. Then my cousin Jeffrey died, and it took a year for the brain tumor to kill him. We were the same age, he was me, and I watched him die. It took a year for him to lose his hair, his sight, his hearing, his face, his hand/eye coordination. He taught me to tie my shoes and then he suddenly couldn’t put his on. He was … Continue reading No God or Stars by Jennifer Cox

A Bald Spot by Karol Lagodzki


 

When the sun catches it right, Lena knows her hair resembles strawberry cotton candy. It trembles on the slightest of breezes, struggles to lift, never dissuaded by the obstinacy of follicles for long. It’s persisted like this for years. Lena’s mother sits on the bleacher just one ahead with her bald spot camouflaged by product and effort. Mom’s scalp supports not one, but two devices designed to lend the appearance of body and fullness. The first—a standard thickener from a squat, purple jar. The second is turf—plastic fibers in a spray. It’s not too dissimilar … Continue reading A Bald Spot by Karol Lagodzki

The Sheets Pulled Over by Tanner Pruitt

sheets
 

The Sheets Pulled Over   When one thinks in love about love, he’s doing what he shouldn’t. He will get it wrong. What if everything were revealed? The apples and milk on your mind when we lay down in Washington Park in the busy green city, if those were left on the bus in Flatbush, had tumbled to the gummed up floor since, and were what occupied you as we rushed back to your bedroom, gripped with heat. When we come to love we come expecting to get some part of it exactly right. What … Continue reading The Sheets Pulled Over by Tanner Pruitt