family
The Song That Found Me
The Song That Found Me How a Broken Guitar and a Stranger’s Melody Gave Me Back My Voice In the spring of 2025, I found a guitar in a dumpster behind my apartment building. It was a battered thing—cracked body, missing a string, the kind of instrument nobody would look at twice. I hadn’t played music in years, not since I was a teenager dreaming of coffeehouse gigs and a life as a singer-songwriter. Life had other plans: a string of dead-end jobs, a breakup that gutted me, and a creeping fear that my creative spark was gone for good. But something about that broken guitar called to me, so I fished it out, dusted it off, and brought it home.
By Shohel Ranaabout a year ago in Fiction
The Library of Strangers
The Library of Strangers How a Tiny Notebook in a Public Library Connected a Divided Town In the summer of 2025, I found a notebook that changed how I saw my town. It was tucked on a shelf in our local library, a small brick building that had somehow survived budget cuts and digital everything. The notebook wasn’t part of the collection—no barcode, no Dewey Decimal number. Just a plain, spiral-bound thing with a faded blue cover and a handwritten title on the first page: The Library of Strangers. Below it, in neat cursive, were the words: “Write something true. Leave it for someone else.”
By Shohel Ranaabout a year ago in Fiction
Digital Dust
The data morgue smelled like ozone and loneliness. Maya adjusted her luminescent hazmat suit’s hood, the hiss of filtered air her only companion. Before her stretched Server Vault 7—miles of abandoned user profiles, decaying chat logs, and forgotten memories scheduled for permanent deletion. Her job: scrub digital graves clean.
By Habibullahabout a year ago in Fiction
Lost and Found
“Brian! If you’re not down here in five minutes I’ll come up there myself and take away your computer for a week!” Wincing from the loud booming voice of his mother, Brian quickly headed downstairs where his family was getting ready to enjoy a Sunday brunch. There was French toast, fluffy and drizzled with maple syrup; a must-do Canadian tradition, along with crisp hashbrowns, sausages and fried bacon.
By Jesse Leungabout a year ago in Fiction
Role Playing
Paki felt it in the pit of his stomach—that sickening drop when the doctor told him the bad news about the cancer. Instantly, he saw in his mind’s eye the small and fluorescent-lit room from decades before: his eight-year-old self at the Pretoria hospital in South Africa and Mother lying in a creaky metal bed, her skeletal frame dark against the blank, white sheets.
By Alison McBainabout a year ago in Fiction
