loneliness
— A solitary dinner becomes surreal when the narrator realizes their guest across the table is actually their own reflection in a mirror.
— A thirteen-year-old questions the contradiction between flinching at physical closeness and yearning for connection, wondering if intimacy is possible without touch.
— A spoiled rich man loses everything when his parents die, struggles to find work, and eventually creates a program to help homeless people become rideshare drivers.
— A guarded girl in group therapy reluctantly befriends Sam, who steals her journal but later reveals her own painful family story.
— A pantoum explores the isolation of depression when others dismiss your pain, repeating lines that circle like the thoughts they describe.
— A boy constantly moving with his struggling immigrant family runs away in Brooklyn, only to realize through memories and reflection that he cannot escape his past or abandon those who...
— An ambassador without mind or face sits in a walled place, contemplating his non-existence and the walls that might have hope where he has none.
— A girl waits in a sweltering car while her mother fights with broken gas pumps, her stream-of-consciousness revealing the death of her brother Joel and her parents' bitter divorce.
— After Earth's population flees to Mars, an eight-year-old boy is accidentally left behind. Eight years later, on his sixteenth birthday, he discovers another forgotten teenager.
— A trumpet teacher arrives for lessons but instead of teaching, drinks espresso and talks about his Sicilian homeland, Mount Etna, and the village where he feels at home.