The weight always comes before my dream ends, pulling me out just enough to force my eyes open. The room is still, but I feel a shifting on top of me. I strain my fingers trying to move them. Nothing. I try to swallow but can’t.
Fiction
The Keeping Room is an online magazine for all women writers, poets, and artists.
We are looking to publish your short stories, essays, free writing, poetry, and photo essays that touch on topics related to Women’s Wisdom, Lessons Learned, Self-care, Bodies, Relationships, and Community.
Writers selected for publication will be paid $25
SELF-CARE FOR WILDFLOWERS by Amy Spies
Jax wakes to a burning scent. Her eyes stay sealed. No emergency, she realizes, simply the toaster. However, no one in this household eats broiled bread, except her …
Screen Door by Mary Lewis
Annie bit into the packet of ketchup and squeezed it out over her tater tots. It wasn’t enough so she canined her way into another one.
PETIT BATTEMENT by Mandy Lange
Molly’s pas de chat is born of force, timing, and intensity. A blink of respite at the pinnacle of the leap, when chaos slips into calm. A gentle return to plywood. She rotates her heel, chafing against her too-small slipper. Works her turn from the back leg.
Beyond Me by Sidney Logan Echevarria
I was not allowed to answer the telephone. Unless, of course, I’d been told to, or, in the very off chance no one was...
Guai Girl By Anyu Ching
I often find myself thinking about the first time. The sound and spring of it. How the unconscious, bite-sized action...
The Lay of Our Land by Angela Belcher Epps
I’m finally hitting my stride after last semester’s rocky start. It was a maddening experience because everything...
I Was Supposed to Stay Out When the Bedroom Door Was Closed by Holly Fine
Cigarette burn holes in my cardigan meant Mom kept me close. I counted them in her comforter, seared edges lined up...
When The Mermaids Came by Holly Barratt
It was early Valentine’s Day morning when the first one washed up dead near Bridgend. By 10am there was a crowd around...
Matriarchs by Sarah Stubbs
I want a yoga instructor with boobs. Real boobs, not those piss-poor B cups; not even C or D will do, although that’s progress …
The Gifted Class by Mary Morris
It happened during the sweltering summer that they lived out of town, the summer of the white Ford station wagon’s inevitable demise…
Seedlings by Jody Lisberger
The day I caught my twin sister Eliza kissing Danny Quinn, I never stopped to think they had a secret. Is that how the kiss felt to her? Like she already knew they were both gay?
SEX & SPATULAS by Pat Ryan
Betty never thought food would be important. She never thought about food at all, certainly not about cooking it. Since leaving home, she ate most meals in the way she liked best: with a book or magazine on the table…
Notes from Camp Chaparral By Hillary Tiefer
Date entry: Sunday, July 12, 1970
I’m coping by writing these notes. I got the idea from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground that was assigned in my AP English class during my last semester of high school.