identity
— Five vignettes explore identity through hands, chess defeat, a berry tree, a letter to younger self, and meditation on the narrator's name.
— A girl feels like an alien at school, invisible until classmates realize her father is rich, then suddenly everyone wants to help her.
— A young person explores their fluid identity through the lens of being a girl, boy, or dragon on different days, ultimately choosing to be themselves.
— A speaker sees herself as a monochrome old photograph in the mirror, noting only pink shoelaces and purple under-eye bags break the grayscale of her reflection.
— An art student struggles to paint a childhood memory she doesn't have, ultimately creating a canvas that blends her parents' first meeting with imagined moments they never shared.
— A boy named Gabriel dreams of his Arizona childhood, navigates Pennsylvania middle school, then learns his family must move to Florida.
— In a post-apocalyptic Nevada compound, Oswald attends a mandatory festival where the High Chancellor reveals the entire climate disaster was an elaborate government hoax to test survival protocols.
— In a world where middlenames determine destiny, a boy named Robin Burke struggles with his musical heritage until riots against the naming system expose its fundamental flaw.
— A speaker confronts the loss of their heart to the moon, becoming a whisper of their former self in this surreal exploration of identity and emptiness.
— After Trump's 2016 election, two sixth-grade best friends—one Democrat, one Republican—struggle when politics threatens their friendship, until a handmade bracelet offers reconciliation.