Annie Bartos

We believe that the real number—of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward—is in the thousands. Pennsylvania Grand Jury Investigation of the Catholic Church, 2018 The first time you saw him, he was leaning over one of the four fountain heads at the long white porcelain trough between the girls’ and boys’ bathroom in the freshman hallway. He lifted his head too quickly from the faucet, and a drip of water creeped from his lower lip down his chin.

I went to my first AWP in Seattle in 2023, anxious and green. I’m an academic; conferences stress me out. The AWP was my foray into the world of creative writing and nothing like what I knew. It’s possible that writers don’t know how to have superficial conversations, or maybe they just don’t want to waste their time, but I knew straight away that I found my people, even if they didn’t know it yet.

She was the oldest grand- daughter. She had strawberry crimped blond hair. She poofed her bangs into balloons on top of her forehead. She was a cashier at the grocery store that smelled like sweat and wrapped fruit in plastic. She wore a gold cross on a gold chain. Her boyfriend was nice and kind of cute, too. He was a plumber or an electrician. He could fix things. She had a soft voice that sang songs in the shower and in church. Shoo— shan’t shoot, shan’t, shoot! He asked for her heart.