When Did You Last Feel Splintered / a Splinter?

Z

Ally

“I met her over the course of decades in bursts of 12 years. Each time, there was something new. She told me she’d had a son. Then her son had a son. And then her son was dead.”

Emily

I don’t know how it happened — or should I say, how I created this splinter — but I took a step, I felt a pin prick, and I knew. There’s a black dot below my big toe, it’s almost a speck of dust. A period to punctuate my stride. I kept on walking.

Echo

I planned to go to a friend’s place to wind down and catch up, but my supervisor told me to go into the office. “Major mistakes in your analysis,” were his words from Slack, at two in the morning. I don’t know what killed me more — letting my friend down, or my inner people pleaser.

There’s a little boy in my head. He sobs and he screams; he wants to play. I don’t know how to tell him that I don’t know how to tell him that he doesn’t exist anymore.)

Meg

I’m torn up in a million pieces. I don’t know if I’ll recover from the betrayal, but the heartbreak’s even worse. My roommate ate all of my cream cheese.

Tamanna

It took about three hours in total for her to tell me how little I mattered to her. Three years of inside jokes, drunken nights out, crying sessions, dinners out on the town, and untold secrets all left in the past. Thanks for the fenty lip gloss, I guess. A text back would have been nicer.

Paul

Last Tuesday at the intersection of `Jefferson and Vermont there was a gray piebald cat sprawled on the street and nobody could see it. And when the light turned green, the tires bore down. And what could I have done but witness with my head half-turned, etching the cat’s twisted figure into my mind?

Jazzy

Sun rays sprinkle rainbows across my room. I love it when nature spontaneously paints my walls. It would’ve been perfect if my tie-dye lilac and coral carpet wasn’t completely drenched. I peel it off my ledge to find a constellation of mold and a windowsill soaked from last week’s storm. I’ve changed my mind — the weather has overstayed its welcome.