Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul

BY LEIGH HOPKINS

The starlings are back. For each of the past three years, they have returned to gather a chaotic pile of damp grass, peeled bark, and matted bits of twine, threads still unraveling even as they are tucked away. One day a silky puff of cream-colored fur appears, the next, a waxy red leaf.

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Leigh Hopkins
The Magician

BY RIOS DE LA LUZ

The Magician lies to her child. Tells her child, it will all be okay. It will all be okay as she puts her on the Greyhound alone on its way to Colorado. Your Tía will pick you up in Denver. Colorado has snowflakes like you can’t imagine. Immaculate formations gentle and soft in your hair.

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Guest Collaborator
Blessed Be the Fruit

It’s spring, and the earth is damp and fertile. Outside my kitchen window, paperwhites pop their heads out of the sodden black earth and promise me that winter is ending. I can take walks without bracing myself against the damp gray skies. Rainbows appear in the afternoons, and on some days, there is even sun.

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Marissa Korbel
Unification

As if these two things that are not equal suddenly are. I walked into the classroom and took a seat in a perimeter row, halfway to the teacher and halfway to the door. I was nearing 25. It was a global women’s studies course. 

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Leigh Hopkins
I saw a light

A woman named Rita babysat me and my little sister. She fed us spaghetti with sweet corn and a side of meat. It was cow liver. The smoke from the meat made me gag. It smelled like what I imagined the depths of a 

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Leigh Hopkins