loss and grief

Story·Beatrix Mackil — A man awakens with no memory in a desolate landscape, recovers fragments of his past through visions, and discovers he has been dead for decades.

Personal Narrative·Dante Chowla-Song — After his grandfather's death, a boy finds solace bird-watching in Central Park, where observing cardinals and hawks helps him accept his grief and stop running from loss.

Story·Evangeline Gustavson — A woman nurtures a mysterious seedling that grows into an extraordinary plant, dies, and leaves offspring; after her death, she reunites with the plant's true spirit—a boy.

Story·Alice Pak — As conflict between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces approaches their border town, two childhood friends witness the gradual erosion of their peaceful world through power outages, distant explosions, and rising...

Personal Narrative·Aisana Zhumabayeva — After their father fails to pick them up from school, two siblings wait in an empty cafeteria until an ambulance arrives to take them to the hospital where they learn...

Story·Lina Yoon — A girl ventures into a frozen forest, falls through river ice where her brother died, and barely survives the journey home through determination and remembered warnings.

Story·Mia Atkinson — A widow, paralyzed by grief for ten years, finds her unfinished embroidery of the night sky and completes it, stitching herself back to wholeness.

Story·Camille Scott — A Jewish girl flees Vienna after Kristallnacht, separated from her family and sent alone to Switzerland while her deported brother's fate remains unknown.

Poetry·Sascha Deal-Lessin — A lament for lost beauty — stars replaced by planes, fish by empty oceans, trees by barren ground — asking where the world's wonder has gone.

Story·Emily Chang — A girl navigates family tensions and grief during a lake outing, culminating in an ice cream mishap that leads to an unexpected swim across the lake with her cousin.