Evvy was driving the ocean side of Highway 1 along the cliffs at Big Sur, fifty years old and feeling it in her neck and hip. It was difficult to keep her eyes off the Pacific. The wave was at sixteen feet. Evvy could imagine her Toyota flying over the edge, could feel that soaring…

We know enough about medicine to know we’re dying. We know enough about dying to know we need a doctor. We know enough about doctors to appoint Art. Art’s okay. He’s supervised a calving or two, and he’s got the free time since his wife died. Calves have bodies. Wives have bodies. It’s as much…

Here you are, knees knocking against the operating table, the shape of your head shadowed on the body in front of you — no, not a body, an abdomen, a part. Pay no mind to the damp behind your neck, the thick sound of breath from your own chest. Focus: it is noon, exactly. Eight…

+ Emma Brousseau earned her MA in English/Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. She previously attended a graduate program in experimental psychology which informs the scientific and speculative aspects of her work. You can find her on Twitter @Emma_Brousseau or at emmabrousseau.com.

Sanitize your hands, sanitize your daughter’s hands, sanitize the kitchen countertops, sanitize the kitchen table, sanitize your daughter’s Nalgene water bottle, sanitize her iPod touch, sanitize her pill box, sanitize The Giver, sanitize the fluffy purple pen, sanitize your daughter’s diary, sanitize her toothbrush body, sanitize the knob to the bathroom door, sanitize your daughter’s…

Norman stood knee-deep in the Niagara River with his hand on the custom-made barrel as it bobbed in the shallow water, its anvil ballast resting against the rocky bottom. Toward the middle of the river, water crashed and slapped violently against jagged rocks. “You ready?” Bill yelled over the sound of the river. Norman nodded.…

The window open to catch the last of the lilac day, we consider the remains of the feast, me and Lisette and Geraldine. The burned clove syrup pooled beneath enough ham for two weeks of sandwiches, one tired deviled egg I’m going to gulp any minute, a few asparagus spears gone chartreuse. No potatoes left,…

Months after his student stopped coming to class, she was taking his order at the Starbucks drive-thru two towns over from the campus — and apartment — they had once shared. He knew her voice through the speaker: gravelly and smoker-like, though her papers and tests never smelled like smoke. He could always tell the…

I told him I would wait here. My legs dangle off the thin concrete pier, and my shoes slip over my heel and hang on my toes like fingertips over a ledge. This dress was so expensive, but it is suffocating and long. The humid air compresses the viscose lining against my body, and the…

I didn’t know my first wedding would be my last, anyone’s last, until the dance floor was almost empty and I was matching my mouth up with the lipstick mark on the rim of an abandoned champagne glass. It was late, though I couldn’t tell you much about time by that stage; the bar, you…

After the party I felt very cool in my long, slim black dress, and through the French doors, I could feel the morning’s overcast grey. August. Six am. British Isles. The restlessness. I did not know what to do with myself after all the guests had left but I was still cresting on adrenaline the…

1. The way I see it, the Tower of Babel was probably just a ladder and an idea: I want to see the face of God. But God doesn’t seem to like anyone questioning his wounding. That’s all I learned, reading the Bible during the few years I insisted on trying the church thing out.…