Eileen Munoz - University of the Incarnate Word

The little girl’s feet sprang into the deep pool of water; cool, icy water stung her goose pimpled legs and soaked the hemline of her cotton-candy pink summer dress. Her bare toes dug into the pebbled floor of the creek she stood in. To her, the small circle of water was a bottomless and dangerous ocean; the dead leaves and twigs that tickled her feet were a slithering, scaled monster that circled her. She hurled her body around, surprised at the slightest touch of a floating piece of bark. No, it was the bristled hunch of the most terrifying creature ever seen.

Kiritika Iyer - Boston University

King Trishanku wanted to ascend to heaven, as most dream-seeking people do. Still a mortal, he wished for his body to be with the Gods. But, still a mortal, still naive and unlearned, he was forbidden. In his distress, he begged any Sages to help him. One Sage performed this sacrifice, but as Trishanku approached Heaven, the Gods blocked his entry, instead sending him into the depths of the earth. The Sage halted this descent in mid-air, suspending him halfway between heaven and Earth, stranded in space among the Saptarishis, the seven glowing sages. My dad tells me this story whenever I point out the Big Dipper. He tells me it whenever I stare into space, when he sees my eyes longing and my thoughts becoming displaced. When he sees my body untethering from its station, floating somewhere, lost, feeling erased.

Adina-Marie Torres - University of the Incarnate Word

On my Texas ID, my gender is labeled as a man. It’s a fun party trick I pull when I meet someone new. Seeing their faces turn twisted in surprise, laughter, and disgust. I stand at a proud 5’4; skirts, curls, corsets, lingerie—they never believe it. And they shouldn’t.

I am, in fact, a born female. Perhaps I pissed someone off when filing paperwork, or maybe I’m truly that clumsy. I’m sure the new guy I’m showing will appreciate it (they rarely ever do).

McKenna Seiger - University of the Incarnate Word

It is said that a mother first feels a connection with her child the moment the knowledge of motherhood enters her head for the first time. Like a sort of kismet first meeting, the mother feels nothing but love at the thought of her unborn baby alone. As a child, I always wondered what my own mother felt upon my conception—being thrust into motherhood. I wondered if she had felt that same connection even before I was fully sentient. I liked to picture her, tiny and twenty-four, sitting on a yoga ball in our cluttered apartment, doing the stretches she had learned at Lamaze class. I liked to imagine that my father, at one point, felt her round stomach and marveled at the little person I would become one day. I wondered if, in bed, they talked about the three of us while I floated around in embryonic fluid like an orbiting planet.

Tyler Lemley - University of the Incarnate Word

The smell of hay bales takes me back to an old ranch house one of my family friends lived in. I was friends with his son and stepdaughter. I was somewhere North of 8 and South of 10 years old. I was, of course, very infatuated with the boy. He was a typical cowboy’s son. He drove us around on the gator, taught me how to jump from hay bale to hay bale, and showed me how to tie a lasso (which I promptly forgot). We played video games, had nerf wars, and explored the small ranch, which seemed the size of a city when I was little.