Half Past

St. Patrick’s Day in New York City can be a lonely occasion, especially when it coincides with a fortieth birthday.

For Soledad, an unmarried and childless Nuyorican living in Brooklyn, the day becomes a reckoning. Outwardly, her life appears enviable: an Ivy League education, a successful career as a probate lawyer, financial stability and social capital within the city’s professional class. Yet beneath these markers of achievement lies a growing sense of unease and absence.

Over the course of a single day, Soledad reflects on the life she imagined for herself and the narrowing timelines imposed by age, gender and cultural expectation. She measures her present against a familiar script of marriage, family, partnership and domestic stability while confronting the unresolved loss of a past relationship that once made those aspirations feel attainable.

As the day unfolds, Soledad examines her desires, memories, deep sense of loneliness, and the weight of unrealized futures, and wonders whether it is still possible to move forward when the past remains emotionally unresolved.

This modern novella occupies the space between a short novel and a long short story. It is approximately 24,000 words.

Food run

Imagine feeding a family of four on less than seventy dollars.

An out-of-work, divorced mother of two attempts to do just that during a late-night dash to the supermarket just before closing. With a handwritten list in hand, she moves quickly through the aisles, comparing prices and calculating trade-offs as she tries to stretch a limited budget to cover groceries for her school-aged children and her ailing mother.

The trip unfolds with quiet urgency and careful planning, until an unexpected encounter at the checkout forces her to confront the consequences of every choice she has made — and the limits of how far determination alone can go. Set over the course of a single evening, the novella examines economic uncertainty, raising a family and the moral burden of making ordinary decisions under intense pressure.

This modern novella is approximately 7,700 words.