Adina-Marie Torres - University of the Incarnate Word

Amber.

There was a time, before the adulting came too quickly, that I was booming. With limbs flailing in dance, voice caring to the mountains, and sequence jacket showing the aliens just where I would be giving my daily performance.

Alexandria Brown - University of the Incarnate Word

They did not warn me. They did not go into detail of what was to come.

I stood in front of my doctor, with my chest fully exposed. This was not the way I

thought a man would see my breasts for the first time. I did not picture the first time my breasts

would be groped would be by a physician. I fought back the tears, staring at the wall in front of

me while he starred at me, shocked by the sight. I can remember it feeling like it was an eternity

before he spoke.

Ash Whiteside - North Carolina State University

Shame is a feeling I know, perhaps better than any other. It trickles down my spine when I catch myself staring for too long. It trembles in my fingertips when they accidentally brush against a hand, or an arm. It beats in my heart when I utter the word, “she”.

Pilar García Guzmán - University of the Incarnate Word

June 24, 2018.

I stood in the outdoor hallway, the closed bedroom door behind me muffling the mutters of the girls I was supposed to be supervising. Lights out had been called an hour ago. But I ignored it, the sounds of their laughter and scheming bed squeaks grounding me as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest and join the stars scattered in the night sky.

Nia Burroughs - University of the Incarnate Word

To end. A noun. Defined by Merriam-Webster as “a point that marks the end of something” or “the point where something ceases to exist.” End, it ends, endings. What does it mean to end something?

Adina-Marie Torres - University of the Incarnate Word

I can’t help but think about how you were always so mad at me. You told me to wash the dishes after Dad barbequed, but he never rinses his boards clean, so instead, they sit there: fermenting in the filth you and Dad created to serve up Sunday dinner.

Zoe London - Stephens College

I’m something of an expert on night drives. That comes in handy when Annabelle texts me, just shy of 11 p.m, and asks if I want to talk on the phone.

Arlene Rosales-Alvarado - University of Oklahoma

Growing up, I never fully grasped the meaning of safe space. There wasn’t a place that saw me at my worst or best until I was forced to hide in a square smaller than 5 x 5 meters.

Serena Middleton - University of Oklahoma

Tuesday

Part of me was excited to see the trash-painted beaches again. Excited to see the seafoam blue ocean pull back and then rush forward to wet my shorts and cover my shins in the sand. However, the scab over a wound that should have healed by now didn’t get ripped off until I stepped out of the airport and stood in the humid air, being assaulted by a cacophony of conversation while waiting for the shuttle to take me to the hotel I had chosen for my week-long stay.

Callie Rowland - Spalding University

At one of my first sleepovers, I slept on my friend’s bathroom floor. Unable to abide her wet staccato snores, I couldn’t sleep in her bed, but terrified her parents would want to watch television before church the next morning, I couldn’t sleep on the couch. So like a Dickensian orphan, I eventually fell asleep atop the cold stone floor, using the hot pink shag rug as a blanket.

McKenna Seiger - University of the Incarnate Word

Sometimes memories of her come to me in dreams so vivid I wake up in cold sweat. Sometimes it is only pieces of her I see like, her favorite OPI nail polish or the photograph of her brother she kept on her nightstand. No matter the dream, I only see her for how she was - rarely young but never older than 70. I dream of her in the waiting room of my dance studio, legs crossed, reading a copy of ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ with small rectangular glasses perched on her button nose.