Kate Ryan

She knows you’re not supposed to call it an “it,” but she honestly can’t tell if it’s a boy or girl or . . . undecided.

The birds abandon their posts in the pepper trees, sending tiny, oblong leaves raining to the ground.

She got too high while watching The Bachelor and had a misanthropic breakdown.

Like booster engines emptied of fuel, my limbs become disposable, useless tanks as the blood rushes from them.

One crawled up the side of the bag and opened her wings, a hardtop convertible with legs.

12:48 AM. Why would someone schedule an exorcism for the middle of a weeknight?

Alison learned from her grandmother how a plastic smile could take you places—especially in a place like Hollywood.

The bread had to be store-bought and white, of course, so as not to raise a red flag among my classmates. I still see rebellion in a ham sandwich.

“Don’t you smash that cake in my face, or I’ll never forgive you,” she said, and she never did, not really.

She couldn’t imagine the water she sat in, the water that enveloped her body, wanted to be here.