Announcing the winners of our 100-WORD CONTEST

Eager to try your hand at the 100-word genre? Submit your best work – fiction or nonfiction – in just 100 words in our second annual 100-Word Contest, returning this fall. Bookmark writermag.com/contests for more information.

First Place

Perennial

BY ALICIA LUNA

Today, I embrace the soil. “I’m working outside,” I tell my wife. I kneel in submission, remembering Abuela’s botanical cathedral. Lemon, cacti, and tomatoes bear fruit to all I took for granted, desperate to fit in. Wasteful youth. . I miss her kitchen, her breath. “Muy bien, hijo,” the corn says. I smile, and the peppers smile back. I crane my neck to the sun. “See, hijo. The veins of the leaves make the sign of the cross.” The spade grips my hand in hers, willing me