loneliness
— A key narrates its existence from hanging on a hook to being lost forever when it falls from a bag onto a cold white floor.
— A prose poem imagines the inner life of a crab—its loneliness, fear, and anger—questioning whether people remember the being they've hurt after mounting it on a wall.
— A child's plea to be forgotten transforms everyday details—soup, Fruit Loops, a voice that travels through walls—into a meditation on presence and erasure.
— A robot travels the world—from beaches to northern lights to hailstorms—waiting for someone to call, revealing loneliness through its metal body and computer brain.
— A child's poem transforms an empty mansion into a haunted space through accumulating details of abandonment and decay.
— A Vietnamese girl named Hoa, overwhelmed by her new American school, runs away to the fields where a mystical connection to nature helps her find peace with her new home.
— A child's boredom becomes a moored boat rocking in a dreary bay, while stars twinkle merrily and gulls squawk terribly above.
— A meditation on feeling trapped by others' expectations transforms into a plea for empathy and a vision of freedom through flight and song.
— A young writer explores the gap between how peers see her—aloof, friendless—and how she sees herself: kind, connected, surviving through writing.
— A girl grows from child to grandmother, repeatedly passing an old woman who rakes leaves through the seasons, only recognizing her absence when it's too late.