SUBMISSIONS

Submissions are accepted on a regular basis, year-round.
Can include, short stories, essays, poetry and prose.
Must not exceed 3,000 words.
Must be written by a current ESA student, or alumni.
Submissions are accepted: e.s.say.says@gmail.com

Monday 3 April 2017



Gaps
Kira Bentley



“So… what should we do now?” 
His eyes were hopeful. She kept staring at the rubble beneath her shoes. Her sneakers were beat enough for the debris to jab through to her tired feet. 
We? When was there ever a we?” Distaste coated her tongue like a glob of bubbling black tar. Tears began to flood her eyes, but they still chased the asphalt. 
He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say anything. “There was you, and there was me. Never once was there a we.” 
Silence of dusk smothered her admission as a salt-water tear hit the earth with an audible smack. She began to step away, but he quickly grasped her wrist with a softness he never knew he possessed. 
“Please,” he croaked. Tears welled in his eyes as they fell from hers. It became hard to swallow. “I just… I’m sorry.”
He wanted to explain everything so badly; his father, the angriness below their feet, the blood in his veins. His chest was tight with the repression of his voice, but the words, the story, simply flew past him like signs on the highway. 
All he had left was his stagnant two-word apology, an old friend of his strangled tongue. Pathetic. 
She tore her wrist from his pleading hold. Frustration bubbled in her throat as palms curled into fists.
“I want to believe you. I want to believe you so fucking badly.” Her eyes scaled the evening trees and finally poured into his, her crestfallen glare a punch to his stomach. “…It just never ends.”
She was digging; clawing ever so desperately for the answers withheld beyond his soil irises. 
He could’ve sworn he was swimming in the Pacific. 

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