By Alayna Beck
I keep a pinecone on my desk. Its appearance is average in every way—brown, sharp, rotund. It’s scented like a Christmas Costco candle, pungent like a curled cinnamon stick up your nose. I stole it from the flower arrangement on my grandmother’s casket. How did they know? How did the funeral directors know my grandmother …
By Kirsten Burningham
“Mom, I have to tell you something reeeeeeeeeaaaalllly important.” “Mom, Mom!” He was yanking my arm so I would face him. “I have a WI GUH GL LY tooth.” He pronounced each syllable slowly and added a syllable for extra effect. It was his first wiggly tooth, a day he had read about and hoped …
By Rachel Terry
Dust motes gently fell in the late afternoon light streaming through the cultural hall windows. The teal velvet curtain had been drawn open, revealing the church stage’s current function: storage for stake athletic equipment, part of an old pinewood derby track, a broken classroom table, and a couple of dusty Christmas trees. We youth leaders …
By Allyson Smith
Walking back into the cancer center for the first infusion feels both familiar and surreal. I cannot believe this is happening again; this was always going to happen again. I am picking up right where I left off. My 18-month hiatus should have been permanent. Instead, this cancer has not only returned, but has spread …
By Tabitha Moody
I used to live in the plains. My house had a second story, with a window in my room that could open to the roof of the first story. I liked to climb out the window and sit on the roof every once in a while to stargaze or stare at the endless blue sky. …
By Sherilyn Stevenson
Congratulations on making it through January! For your literary treat, the Prose board presents two pieces. The first is a short story with technology themes fresh and relevant and spiritual themes of eternity. The second is a personal commentary on new grief and the revisiting of faith as a response. Both will have you thinking …
By Shari Crall
Standing in the warm waters off Ulua Beach, I lifted my feet and began to float. The week before I had been losing it. Like in a way that made me question what I was made of. I had a bout of nerves so intense I threw up several times. The next day, I stared …
By Wendy Weitzel
The steps ahead of me rose steep and narrow, ascending straight to heaven. “The Steps of Penitence,” our Egyptian guide, Ahmad explained with the grin of one who had the climbing prowess of a dromedary. “Seven-hundred-and-fifty steps until you reach the summit. Only the truly penitent will succeed.” For two hours, we had zigzagged up …
By Alison Linnell
I don’t know when my expectation began that a car should have all four hubcaps. It could have been in 1982, at seventeen, when I bought my first car—a red Ford Fiesta for $1,700—and worked many hours after school at Taco Time for $3.35 per hour to make the payment. It could have been when …
By Jerie Sandholtz Jacobs
No one has ever accused me of being a perfectionist. I’m okay with that. If anything, I would classify myself as an imperfectionist. Imperfection comes naturally to me. Though she didn’t fabricate a term for it, my mom gave me my earliest lessons in the art and power of imperfectionism. When I was five or …