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(In Order of Most Recent Publication)

“The Gaunt of Goodbye”
(First Place – Alpha Delta Phi Literary Competition 2025)

“With Both Arms”
(Down in the Dirt)

“L’Uomo che assomigliava a La Russa”
(Italian America)

“Dash-Dash-Dot … Dash-Dash-Dash”
(Page & Spine)

“The Good Shepherd”
(Adelaide Literary Review)

“What a Mess”
(Yellow Mama)

“Cosa Ami”
(Italian America)

“Making Frank a Ringtone”
(The Bitchin’ Kitsch)

“Growing Gray”
(The Flash Fiction Press)

“The Missing One Percent”
(Scarlet Leaf Review)

We lay on the concrete sidewalk outside her apartment building and stared into the midnight sky at the few stars that the city lights allowed us to see. At this point, I knew Kelly was in love with me. And at this point, I knew I wasn’t in love with her. For the better part of eight months, I’d done my best to dismiss it and let our relationship grow closer.

It didn’t begin that way, though. No, our relationship began with a death. An impending one. My dad’s best friend from childhood, Butch, and his protracted battle with lung cancer. Butch was always quick with a joke while holding his old tobacco pipe an inch from his lips. He smoked the kind of tobacco that gave off such a pleasant second-hand smell, the kind that doesn’t make you cringe the way that cigarette smoke does. The kind that makes you wish for it to waft in your direction so you can catch whiffs while your parents looked the other way. [Read Full Version]

The moment I hit the ground and heard my right arm snap, I thought about how much time I’d lose from work. Then the scaffold slowly toppled backward, and when I held my right arm up to shield myself from it, I could see the fracture. And still, all I could think was how much time is this gonna cost me. That’s the last thought I remembered before I passed out. 

After I awoke in the hospital, my wife, Marianne, sat there in the room with our three-year-old daughter, Alexa, asleep in her arms. It took a little while for my vision to adjust and for my mind to catch up to what I was seeing. What I saw was a look of concern on her face rather than relief, maybe even gratefulness, that I’d come to. She didn’t tell me why. Instead, she waited for the doctor to come in and let me know that my arm had been amputated. [Read Full Version]

As translated by Serena Lonigro

Assomigliava a Tony La Russa. Capelli neri. Naso a punta. Mascella quadrata. Aveva i tratti tipici di un uomo dell’Italia meridionale. Dopo tutto il suo nome era Lou Massaro. Insegnava Storia americana in prima superiore al mio liceo, che era ad appena dieci minuti di autobus da casa mia.

Il Prof. Massaro indossava sempre un cappello degli Oakland Athletics, anche quando insegnava, vestito in giacca e cravatta. Era come se volesse sottolineare la sua notevole somiglianza al noto allenatore di baseball. Le uniche volte in cui l’avevo visto togliersi il cappello era durante il Giuramento alla Bandiera e quando cenava al ristorante dei miei genitori. [Read Full Version]

I bent down to pick up the business card from the sidewalk that led to my work building, and even before I held it, I could tell it wasn’t from a co-worker. It didn’t have the blue border or mint green font that our company used. In fact, it didn’t have any color at all. Just a bunch of black dots and lines that I noticed before I saw the header: International Morse Code. I looked closer, and centered at the very bottom was printed simply—Mark Guiney, Creative Director—s followed by his email and phone number. I smiled. Because in spite of the card’s lack of color, it caught my eye.

Instead of throwing it out, I placed it on my desk. Throughout the day, I glanced at the card, studying individual letters and how the dots and dashes were arranged to communicate them. [Read Full Version]

The frail boy cried such big tears in his tiny uniform.

At first I didn’t even notice. Our game had just ended in a very anticlimactic ending, and after addressing the team, I tended to the baseball equipment, picking up what was always scattered here, always scattered there. I was on one knee, shoving my bat, the wood one I used to hit the kids infield practice, into my baseball bag when I heard something slight, something soft that sounded like it came from off in the distance. I looked up and dropped my bag, my bat only halfway in.

I walked a few steps up to the chain link fence, the one that protected us from errant baseballs flying into our dugout. The boy stood there, his fingers curled around those chain links, clinging to them. [Read Full Version]

We walked from the falls to our apartment, though I can’t remember the reason why—we being myself, Scooter, Shitbag, and Ricky. It was a long way off, really. And by that time Fritz had disappeared. But nobody brought him up anyway.

We hiked it across town, stopping a few times because Ricky had to throw up. And when he did, he’d find the closest wooded area and go and do so. We just waited until he was done. After he walked out and wiped his mouth with the bottom of his shirt, we continued walking without much to say and without considering that there was something inside of him trying to find a way out.

The apartment Scooter and I lived in wasn’t tidy, but it wasn’t a shithole either, even though you might think so because we referred to it as The Deucehole. All it was was Apartment #2 on the second floor. That’s all. [Read Full Version]

As translated by Maria Goffman

Ho parlato con l’allenatore di Alex dopo la partita di calcio. Lui non ha giocato molto e quando lo ha fatto, non ha caricato la palla o corso per farsi spazio o fatto molto di qualsiasi cosa di importante. Il nostro colloquio non è durato più di cinque minuti, e l’ho ringraziato per tutto quello che lui stava facendo quell’autunno per aiutare un gruppo di ragazzi di nove anni a godersi il gioco che io ho amato.

Alex e io abbiamo camminato verso la macchina, lui ha sorseggiato la sua bottiglia d’acqua mentre io portavo la sua borsa di calcio—la prima volta che ho mai fatto ciò. Ho sempre fatto portare a lui il suo equipaggiamento.

Come ho guidato fuori dal parcheggio, Alex guardava dritto davanti a se, tranquillo.

“Sono nei guai?” mi ha chiesto. [Read Full Version]

I should never have assigned him a ringtone. And to choose a popular one—that one from the Fetty Wap song that goes “Hey What’s Up Hello”—what was I thinking.

I know what I was thinking. I was thinking about how funny it would be to give him such a ridiculous ringtone. Hey What’s Up Hello. Then I ended up falling in love with it. Loved hearing it around D.C. on the phones of strangers sitting outside of those trendy Pho restaurants or waiting for the ever-delayed Metro train. I loved those reminders of him, like they were little post-it notes stuck all over the outside world. I loved them until I didn’t. [Read Full Version]

I arrived late for the first day of grad school and scanned the unfamiliar faces seated around the room. We went through introductions. I said my name, where I was from, that I was pursuing a writing degree to become a teacher. Halfway through class, the door opened and a girl hobbled in, her foot velcroed into a thick plastic medical boot. She sat down right across from me, and I tried not to stare.

After class I waited for her on the sidewalk and introduced myself. How are you feeling? I asked.

She looked down at her bound foot. It’ll heal, she said. This is just for a few days.

I mean emotionally. How are you feeling—emotionally, I said.

She laughed.

Would you like to go for a walk when your foot gets better? I asked.

But we don’t even know each other yet, she said. [Read Full Version]

“But Dad, we really shouldn’t go in the ocean when it’s about to storm like this,” Abby said.

“I know, I know,” her dad replied. “But we’ll be quick. I promise. Then we’ll come back and unpack the car.” He looked over to Ryan and raised his eyebrows.

“Fuck it, you know I’m in!” she exclaimed.

“Hey, watch it around your dad. I don’t care how old you are, you’ll always be too young for that language … and most of the other stuff you do.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d made a comment of the sort. After twenty-two years of Abby and eighteen years of Ryan, he knew just how independent his daughters had grown to be. And he was well aware that Abby was responsible, always responsible. Beneath her long, straight dark brown hair, she was the conscientious one. The judicious one.

Ryan, however, Ryan and her defiant light brown curls were quite the opposite. Ryan flung herself into the world in a way that made demands of it. She would not be afraid. She would not be careful. And she would not care what anyone thought about her. Attitude. Ryan and her attitude. He loved that about her. She was her own person and wholly unapologetic about it. He also loved remaining oblivious to the many things she’d done by the age of eighteen.  [Read Full Version]