Broad Ripple Review

Carl knows Tim is gone when his skin takes on the texture and color of a terracotta planter. He knows the shade well, having spent the last several days wandering through the living room, stopping at the display case with pieces of Tim’s parents and grandparents, shards of their skin mounted like butterflies pinned into a specimen box. When Carl sets his hand on his husband’s chest, it feels hollow, not just still, as though he is one of those hundreds—maybe it was thousand

I was four months pregnant, and we were already broken up when he started planning our future again. The muscle memory came easily—pretending the wound wasn’t still bleeding beneath the floorboards. We spoke in futures, borrowed intimacy like proof we hadn’t imagined it all. He would FaceTime me late at night, tilting the screen as if he were offering himself carefully, hoping I would take him whole. “I didn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said, his voice light with antici

You might’ve seen my domain from an airplane window. Miles and miles of rocky, empty, firework-colored desert, and somewhere at the center of it all, the little white glint of a lone building. That’s where we live. My older brother, my grandad, and me – King of Infinite Space. You probably wouldn’t think anything about it. I’ve been on a plane once too, for my parents’ funeral. My brother let me have the window seat on the way back, so I know there are all sorts of strange sh

I wore only new shoes that summer. He asked to walk with me. My heels sank into mud. We took the woodsy path to the cliffside bar where the older teenagers kissed. The gossips told my mother this. I didn't catch his name. I hardly looked at his face. He was traveling up and down the boot to festivals of the saints. A pellegrino. In my mother's childhood, they walked barefoot for their penance, prayed at the church. He wore grown men's shoes and zippered pants. He walked

My boyfriend left for a week, but he hasn’t been back in a month. He keeps texting me, “Just a few more days, babe.” His name is Gary, but his SoundCloud rapper name is G-Dirty money. We met in college, senior year, and he owned a rusty red truck. This was upstate New York, where everyone owned a rusty red truck. Gary fit in. It snowed all the time that year. We used to smoke cigarettes in the rusty red truck bed, snow everywhere, letting ourselves get buried together.