The Act of Looking Up

by Lili Taylor

I've discovered something interesting about the act of looking up. Try this experiment when you're next out on the street. Stand on the sidewalk, look up, and stay looking up for a good couple of minutes. I guarantee you a fellow human walking by will pass you, pause, and then look up too. I don't know where it comes from, this instinct to look up when another human is looking up. Is it from the way, way old days when scary creatures jumped down on us from the tree branches above?

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Lili Taylor is an American actress. Her six sentences are excerpted from Turning to Birds, The Power and Beauty of Noticing.

The Gorge

by Lisa Lahey

When Amos found me, I looked like a wet bundle of rags lying at the bottom of the gorge. My long, brown hair was tangled across my chalk white skin and my glassy brown eyes stared at the clouds, seeing nothing. My legs were splayed in an obscene pose. I’d been thrown into the gorge, not placed there. My long, heavy skirts wrapped around my waist leaving nothing to the imagination. If I wasn’t dead, I’d die of embarrassment.

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Lisa Lahey's work has appeared in magazines such as 34th Parallel, Spadina Literary Review, and others.

Unpacking My Heart

by Brigitta Scheib

Every morning before preschool, her hair in braids, silvery eyes wet and lip quivering, I would kiss inside her tiny hand just to get her out the door. Her favorite storybook said pressing this comforting kiss to her cheek would keep me close all day. Thirteen years later, driving over highways, smooth and rough, we arrive at an antiseptic dorm at a university. I unbox cargo and unpack her. There are no soothing pecks to anyone’s palm. When it’s time for me to leave, she flops on the twin bed, her platinum hair fanning around her, and waves, “Bye, Mom.”

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Brigitta Scheib lives in Harrisburg, PA with her husband, daughter and three orange cats. She enjoys writing different genres but prefers brevity-flash and micro stories.