Published Short Stories, Essays, and Poetry
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Kayla’s Summer Mix <3
I find the disc at the bottom of the glove box, under expired insurance cards and a pen that will never write again. The paper sleeve says KAYLA’S SUMMER MIX
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The Taste of Absence
My father drank black Maxwell House from a repurposed Big Gulp cup, the kind with afaded NASCAR logo and a plastic straw he never used. Every morning, long before theworld stirred, he’d fill it to the brim and cradle it between his knees as he drove to work. No cream. No sugar. Just heat, grit, and something close to devotion. On weekends, he used the Grumpy mug I bought him when I was twelve. We were atDisney World, sweating through July, and I picked it out with the kind of glee only achild fee…
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Gone to Babyland
The morning feels ordinary. A breeze rattles the windows of the houses along Hermosa Beach. Bacon smoke drifts from a cottage kitchen and mingles with the briny air. Farther down the shoreline, gulls wheel overhead, their cries sharp, almost mocking, puncturing the stillness of the day. The tide hums against the sand with steady rhythm, a sound so constant that no one listens anymore. Two children run ahead, small shadows flickering across the bright sand. Sarah, the older sister, sprints with her braids flying, her voice ringing with excitement. Her younger brother, Michael, stumbles after her with the clumsy confidence…
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Six Words. One Legendary Napkin. Endless Possibilities
The story begins, as so many legends do, around a table. Ernest Hemingway, the tale goes, was sitting with fellow writers in a bar or restaurant when he made a wager. For ten dollars from each of them, he claimed he could write a complete story in only six words. Hemingway scribbled on a napkin and passed it around: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. The others, the story goes, paid up.Historians and critics still argue about whether the event ever happened, or whether Hemingway even wrote those…
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Weary Willie
There is a permanent imprint on memory when smoke infiltrates the senses. I was awaiting my cue with a few other clowns when the foul smell of burning canvas reached me. Dressed in oversized pants that were barely held up by my flimsy suspenders and an unshaven face covered in thick white paint, I called myself Weary Willie, a sad hobo clown with a permanent frown. I always got the short end of the stick, yet I never gave up. An important lesson my pa taught me and one in which I impressed on the children who came to the…
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The Powerful Way Celebrity Gravesites Help Me Cope with My Grief
At night, when the house settles into its own quiet, I open YouTube and visit the dead. A man with a calm voice walks through a cemetery in Los Angeles, his camera steady as he points to the names carved in marble. The title reads Hollywood Graveyard: Legends of Old Hollywood. I know his rhythm by now: the slow pan to a headstone, the hum of birds, the trimmed grass that looks almost staged.I started watching in 2020 during the pandemic, when the world blurred between headlines and hospital coun…
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Pulling Up Azaleas
Pulling Up Azaleas: A cheating husband in a failed marriage blames his wife for the gun pointed at him.
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Fed to the Gators
The crunching of crispy pine needles beneath my sneakers echoed among the trees. As I trekked through the small, wooded lot beside our home, my older sister, Donna, gripped the chains of her seat swing. She was completely oblivious to her surroundings, which included my random bursts of singing. Her legs dangled above the scuffed grass while she swayed back and forth. The Walkman cassette player clipped to her jeans pocket blared a Stevie Nicks song about white doves. Mom had instructed Donna to watch me that day while she worked yet another twelve-hour shift at Hollywood Memorial Hospital. Donna…
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If Early 2000s TV Shows Were Rebooted by Burned-Out Millennials with Unstable Wi-Fi
2. Chappelle’s Show: White People’s Reaction Videos Edition: Each episode features a vintage sketch followed by a panel of white millennials squirming in real time, saying things like, “This was funny in 2004, right?” and “I think we’ve grown… I mean, I’ve grown?” No jokes are made, only reckonings.
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Chained to the Drift
It’s difficult to devote your life to a family that will never embrace you fully. Especially when your newly acquired family, by law, constantly expects utter devotion. Such was the case for Mrs. Mary Louise Elmwood, a young woman from a highly respected family in northern Alabama. It was a fine match; a proper combination between two well-off esteemed families. Mr. Robert Elmwood, although barely thirty, had already established quite the reputation for himself as a steadfast lawyer in the newly exquisite courthouse in downtown Athens. He was a ruthless lawyer in the courtroom, who never let any criminal walk…
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Weary Willie
I was awaiting my cue, with a few other clowns, when the foul smell of burning canvas infiltrated my senses. Dressed in oversized pants barely held up by my flimsy suspenders and my unshaven face covered in thick white paint. I called myself Weary Willie, a sad hobo clown with a permanent frown. I always got the short end of the stick, yet I never gave up. An important lesson my pa taught me, and one which I impressed on the children who came to the Ringling Circus.
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The Tilt-a-Whirl Knows My Name
Ferris wheel turning. Slow. Too slow. Lights twitch on like startled eyes. Air thick with kettle corn sweetness. Grease cooling on metal. Burnt sugar clinging to the teeth. Beneath it, the taste of pennies left too long in the mouth. Pumpkins on the judging table. Collapsing inward. Flies tracing lazy circles. The judges gone but their fingerprints still dent the softened skin. Twilight seeps like water into wool. The sky flickers between wound and fire. Ticket in my palm. Tilt-a-Whirl. Paper warm. My mother once held one here. Same month. Same fairground. Her laugh always sharper in autumn, breaking into…
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The Moon’s Apron
Mama always hung the laundry at night, beneath a moon that swelled fat and silver, trailing silk light across our backyard. Said the moon softened fabric better than the sun ever could. I’d sit barefoot on the back stoop, knees hugged tight, watching her shadow sway between sheets like a lighthouse keeper tending ghosts. Her skirts swirled with the wind, and her pale arms rose and fell in rhythm, lifting garments that floated like saints in surrender. She never l…
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Exit Interview
The room is white in a way that feels intentional. Not sterile. Manufactured. A white that hums softly beneath the surface. It has no corners, no clock. Just a smooth table and two chairs. One of them is already occupied. The man sitting across from me wears a dark suit and no expression. His eyes are the exact color of boiled water. His tie is slightly askew. “Ms. Collins,” he says. “Yes?” My voice comes out hoarse. I haven’t used it in a while. Or maybe I’ve…
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Laying Fallow
Within a small-scale labyrinth of untouched Florida, there exists a modest cemetery hidden by time and nature. The lush, wooded area, which once totally hid this tiny sliver of a sanctuary from view, was mostly chopped up and molded into an everyday American small-town neighborhood. House after house, built side by side, now surrounds what’s left of the natural land and the cemetery. As to why this sacred space was rendered, it’s obvious to anyone who’s suffered from death’s unavoidable harvesting. It’s a place for those left behind in the fields, alone, who need to make sense of their loss.…
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The Mouth of Florida
They tell us the swamp has a mouth. Not teeth, not tongue, not lips—just a mouth big enough to swallow a whole town. When the night is hot and the frogs scream too loud, you can hear it breathe. Inhale: the cypress bow. Exhale: the sawgrass rattles. Mama says if you lean close enough to the water, it will whisper your name, syllable by syllable, until you forget it was ever yours.
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What We Carried
Sweet Tea (unsweetened) Aunt Carla set out a full pitcher, claiming it was healthier this way, even though Mama always said unsweet tea was for Yankees and people with no backbone. The ice had already melted once, then refrozen in the drive from Jacksonville to Port St. Lucie. The cubes clinked softly as I poured a cup, pretending not to hear Carla whispering that I looked “smaller” than she remembered…
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Every Other Word an F-Bomb: When Writers Mistake Profanity for Voice
I once participated in a collaborative writing exercise where we each contributed a short passage to build a shared story. The setting was the rural South in the early 1900s: dusty porches, hymnals, women stirring pots while watching the horizon for news. One writer turned in a single page that read like a drunk voicemail. Every other word was “fuck” or “shit.” The voice didn’t match the setting, didn’t reveal character, didn’t move the story. It broke the entire spell.
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Meet Your Maker
“You don’t need my permission… I always hoped for you, like I hoped for her. We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they’ve come.” Ruth Handler, the literal creator of Barbie, says this when Barbie asks her for permission to become human. The idea seems silly—a doll asking its maker for the chance to live a normal human life. But how many daughters have essentially asked this of their own mothers?
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Children’s TV Shows Ranked By How Much They’ve Ruined My Will To Live
Welcome to my definitive ranking of children’s programming based not on educational value, but on the sheer psychological toll they’ve taken on my adult brain.1. Caillou—Should Be Tried at The Hague I don’t know what war crime this bald Canadian toddler committed to earn a five-season sentence of whining, but here we are. His voice triggers my fight-or-flight. He never learns. He never grows. He just is. A sentient beige void of entitlement. Watching Caillou is like being trapped in a dentist’s…
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Are You My Mother?
“But in my postpartum life on a rainy December evening, compassion flowed into the recesses of my soul.” Struggling with a newfound role, a mother ponders how giving life has awakened her empathy towards the suffering, and allowed a realization of what true love is… “Please don’t be dead,” I said, as I scampered towards the frail body resting by the side of the road. Having just swerved into a sharp U-turn, my tires squealed in protest as I slammed on the brakes. I hoped it wasn’t too late….
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Scenes I Imagined While Bottle-Feeding the Baby at 2 A.M.
At 2 a.m., the world is quiet. Except in my head.The baby is squirming in my arms, sucking on a bottle like it personally offended her. Her tiny fists keep punching the air with righteous fury. She’s got reflux, which means I have roughly twelve minutes before she projectile spits up half the bottle and all of her rage onto my last clean shirt.The toddler is snoring in the next room, clutching a plastic carrot and dreaming of something probably violent and produce-related. My husband is sleeping…
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Just Like Meghan Markle, I, Too, Am a Domestic Goddess While My Toddler Hurls Feces Onto Walls
Like many overcaffeinated, emotionally brittle mothers hiding from their children in the pantry, I was thrilled to see Meghan Markle’s new Netflix show: a lifestyle series where she does incredibly relatable things like garnish microgreens with ethically sourced truffle dust while her children are presumably learning Mandarin in a pastel nursery scented with cedar and subtle desperation. She’s just like us… if “us” means former duchesses turned Etsy-core influencers who froth oat milk in Restorat…
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EGG HUNT
My hands are hovering above my open eyes. I let out a deep sigh in the hopes that my wife will hurry up so I can get back to the game. I cast a quick glance below at my son, Bobby. I can’t help but smirk at his dogged determination to keep his tiny hands pressed firmly against his closed eyelids. A wicker basket filled with artificial green Easter grass hangs from the bend of his right elbow. “No peeking!” My wife’s giggles echo throughout our house. Her sneakers squeak against the tiled floor