Buckshot
Aspen Ross | Young Writers Issue | Fiction, Winter 2025
Despite checking all the biological boxes, I’m not much of a man. I’ve got a sad pair of calves and weigh a wimpy one-twenty-four. My dad let out a heavy, shameful sigh at my first physical. He glimpsed the weight the doctor scratched below my name, “Ryan Taylor,” and told me he loved me. It was so clearly laced with pity, but it still meant a lot. It’s been years since I stepped back into a doctor's office, but his passing “love you’s” have never sounded quite the same.
____________
When my Uncle, Scott, passed off the rifle, I could feel my hand reject it. We were at his house, a humble trailer sat on an absurd amount of land. I held on, but the trigger was scratchy on my finger pad, and my palm felt too wet to keep a good grasp. He watched me fiddle with the gun for a minute, trying to explain how I’d turn the safety off.
The metal weighed my forearm down, and I felt like I was back in that doctor’s office. All the names blurred as the nurse scrolled past various files that looked familiar to me now, holding and tracing my nail over the letters etched in the rifle’s stock. The wood seemed ancient, and I wasn’t safe anymore.
____________
Today, I’ve got a new reason to be uneasy. The safety was finally off, and a brand new case of beer was settled in the fridge. Fresh from the grocery store but missing two cans. “Who the hell actually listens when they tell you ‘don’t drink and drive?’” I hear Dad say to Scott.
Scott looks uncomfortable. “Do what you want, Warner.” He’s slouched in a fold-out lawn chair, in the cup holder sits an unopened Truly. He never looks like he wants to be anywhere.
Scott’s skinny like me and, from what I know, straight-edge. His hair is brown, with a barely grown-out buzz, gray powdering his hairline. His five o’clock shadow hides his soft jawline. He and Dad never talk, but because I still reload “like a commie,” it’s all hands on deck.
It’s an okay way to reload, Scott tells me, but not in front of Dad. He had the brightest idea of enlisting, leaving his perfectly fine job and family to get carpet-bombed in the Middle East. One night, a couple of shots in, Dad told me the worst thing you could do was survive. Even so, he still slides me a pamphlet every Christmas.
It was last August that Dad and I had actually spoken—a full conversation, at least. Now and again, he’d send me a Wiki-how article on how to change a tire or unscrew a wine cork. Then, he’d told me I had potential. Twenty-two years into it, and my best was still untapped. He’d watch me blink for a moment, glaring through the shatter-like shapes in his scotch glass.
“The best way to learn is on your own,” Dad says to me, “Bring us back somethin’, anythin’.” I watch him reload the gun, and he presses it to my chest. He huffs as he steps back, “Just don’t mess up. Shoot to kill.”
He explains the right way to reload in detail; I’m sure I could pick it up if I listen. Though, as I’m pointed to the thicket behind his house, I remember I don’t. The house and the chatter disappear behind me, and I start feeling it. Light bellows down through the treetops onto me. The day is perfect, unnerving. The air is warm, and the sky is clear. The sun is hot in spots on my skin. My belly feels caved to my back, and I’m nauseous.
Gun clutched to my chest, I trek deeper through the forest, my shoes catching on emerging roots.There's a soft rustling too light to place a direction. Despite the confusion, I look around.
There’s a doe. I watch her sniff around momentarily. She’s searching like her life is new. Her wet nose glistens in the sun, it catching in her lashes as she peeks up. Her fur is a warm chestnut, her chest a faded white. We’re built similarly, tall and skinny. I can see her knees as her front leg bends up.
I’m standing behind a tree, a little clueless as I admire. I recognize that I’m supposed to do something, but my palm feels the divots of the signatures on the stock. I’ve gotten distracted by them before I know it. I look down at them, reading each name and attempting to recognize who they belong to. Most I’ve never met; they died before I was born.
But there's one I recognize. Eugene, my grandfather, has his name etched on the underside. He’s the one who passed the rifle off to Scott, who encouraged Dad to enlist. Dad was so quick with it when Grandpa mentioned the army. He told me Scott couldn’t handle things real men can. I told him he needed to get over it.
____________
Before I had left for the forest, Scott called me inside. He sat awkwardly near me on the living room couch. The whole family, extended and all, was in the dining room beside us. They chatted loudly, patiently waiting for me to bring them their meal.
Scott cleared his throat, “The game doesn’t have to be big.”
I had yet to make eye contact. I had been sickly nervous all day. “I know,” I responded lowly.
His words came out in the middle of mine, “It can be a side dish. A rabbit or bird,” no chance, “or... uh somethin’. Don’t dream too big.” He pushed his hands down his khakis, wiping the sweat.
The ceiling was high, a hollow gable. Dark, wooden beams stretched between each side. A brick chimney extended from a fireplace, covering the front wall. Two windows sat beside the fireplace, and a soft, midday light let through, but the fluorescent wall sconces drowned it out. The whole house smelled like the same cedar and patchouli, so strong I felt it in my throat. I looked back at Scott. “Is your name on the stock?”
His eyes didn’t meet mine. A little louder, I asked, “When am I supposed to put mine on there?”
Still staring off, he sighed. “Probably this evening. If you bring game back.” If I brought game back. Scott then made sure to explain all the ifs to me. Shoot the head or the heart, “mortal shots.” When I missed (he said I most likely will), follow close for another shot. As if shooting it once wasn’t hard enough.
____________
The doe comes back into my mind, and I remember I’m here for a reason. The doe’s head raises, jaw moving as she grinds down the green in her mouth.
I’m chewing on my cheek almost subconsciously. I’m not ready. How could people ever be prepared for this? My mind rapidly wanders but never leaves the subject of the doe. She’s just feet in front of me. So close, I can imagine her dropping dead, red coating the grass and seeping
deep into the soil. I wonder if the dirt would appreciate the fluid.
Just standing here, I’m freaking out in my tension. The gun almost slips from my hand as I raise it. The muzzle is pointed in the general direction of the doe; I’m not sure when I’ve got it aimed right. It’s still a difficult thing for me to maneuver. I’ve wrapped my pointer around the trigger, the other hand holding it up by the forend. My view of the muzzle’s tip is barely on her flank, near the heart, I hope.
The shot is taken, and I black out for a moment. The blast isn’t as powerful when you're practicing in a range, but in the tranquility of a forest, it shakes me by my shoulders and down to my core. I hear no rustle of the doe running away past the sheer ringing in my head, though none of dropping to the ground. As fresh in my mind as the image is, I would throw up if she had.
I don’t get to see where I hit. I open my eyes, and the doe’s blood had trickled down in a panicked line on the grass. She had fled. My eyes stay where the deer had been, and I feel her shadow continue to cast.
How am I supposed to know if the shot was mortal? She could’ve died in a bush a few steps ahead or be sprinting up a hill, fur soaked down to the skin with blood, still grinding her teeth together.
The rifle falls through my grasp, leaving me to hold it by the muzzle as I walk forward. As a squelch sounds from under my sneaker, like blood on a carpet, I pick my step up and turn for home.
When I’m back, I have nothing to show for myself except for the red I scraped off my soles before I walked inside. The sconces are dimmed. Scott meets me first, having never left his
spot on the couch. I assume somebody else saw my empty arms as I stumbled back because the dining room was void of its usual chatter. Scott’s expression doesn’t shift, though his eyes are still not on me. They’ve trailed down to the gun, its stock dragging on the ground.
“Those signatures always used to leave splinters in my hand,” he says, exhaling, “You got nothin’?”
I sit down next to him. The gun is placed on my lap and slightly on his. I had a little hope walking in to see him. “I’m sorry.” If anyone would understand, it had to be him. He hums, “Couldn’t do it? No name on the gun for you, I guess.” He picks the rifle up off my lap, looking down at the etches in the stock.
Footsteps sound out from the dining room, approaching where Scott and I are. “Ryan?” Dad says, “You came back quick, kid. What’d you get for me?” The same midday light peeks through the windows, now visible on my dad’s back.
I’m quiet. My heart beats to the surface of my ribs, my throat clogged and unable to make a sound.
“He got a deer too heavy to carry back,” Scott chimed. “He came in here to ask me for help.” He puts the rifle down to rest on the arm of the couch, struggling a little to get it sitting upright. The metal gives a heavy thump on the dark oak floor. It seems so much heavier in Scott and I’s hands.
Dad looks over at me. His dark brown hair is in strands over his forehead, the rest slicked back. I’ve cowered, standing nervously behind the couch. His face, brows furrowed and lips pursed, tells me to come to him and I oblige.
“You don’t come to ask me?” he says, urging forward. “It’ll take double of you two and only one of me to pull a buck out of a ditch.”
Scott’s face stays straight. Dad’s whole life has been fueled by jealousy and concentrated spite. His tantrums are nothing new. Bigger doesn’t matter—whoever’s older gets the gun. It’s always been that way, but Dad believes curves straighten to his will. He joined the army, married my mom, and had me all out of spite. Just to show he could do what Scott hadn’t.
Scott spits, “Does it matter? You’re in the kitchen anyway, makin’ sides with Nancy.”
Dad quiets for a moment. “Struggle, I guess. Fucks sake.” He mutters a few things to himself as he slinks back into the kitchen.
Nancy, my mom, never dares when my dad’s within legal distance. The only reason they're civil now is because of me and the pre-rolled, shinily packaged joints she keeps in her purse. She’s a good woman, another victim of his drowsy, spiteful, last-minute commitments he still can’t seem to keep up with. Half of his house is renovated. The other side’s still old.
I lived with Mom most of the time after they split. Dad came home and forgot we had existed. He never called, never let us know he was coming home, and never gave us any sign he was alive while he was deployed. Mom assumed he had died. A part of me wishes he had; things would be much less complicated. I’d be devastated, but only for a short while. Now that I’m in college, Mom’s the first house I visit for the holidays.
Scott sighs, his posture perking as he pushes out his chest before grabbing back hold of the gun. His hands are clammy and it takes effort for him to pick it up. “Let’s get on it. Before Warner pops a blood vessel.”
The forest never changes. It seems like the same few birds chirp for every inch; it’s never silent. Their sounds are sweet, reassuring that life is present no matter where you go or what you do. The leaves up above rustle with squirrels that scurry up and down the branches. The roots I trip on, the ones Scott skillfully avoids, all trail back to their respective trees. The seasons cycle, but no forest is ever dead.
As I’m daydreaming, putting meaning on things simply sitting there, Scott seatbelts me. He holds out his arm, stopping me from walking forward. The trail is in front of us. The doe had zigzagged, worming in between trees, running from a predator that fled long before she had.
“You shoot it in the leg?” Scott asks. His arm returns to his side, eyes straight forward. I’m trying to place just where the trail stops from where I stand. The blood had seeped between the blades of grass, making it hard to follow.
“I dunno,” I admit, “I panicked.”
I hear Scott sigh. He doesn't berate me, he instead tilts his head down and begins to follow the trail out. “If you shot it in the leg, it should’ve dropped not too far from here.” It doesn’t take us too long to find her. She’s collapsed underneath a tree, her torso heaving with every breath. The bullet was lodged a few inches above her front right hoof, just below the knee. Her blood has barely crusted, matted into her fur, still wet around the wound. Flesh, fur balding, flays around the entrance, the muscles deep in contracting. I watch her writhe. Frozen, I can’t take my eyes off the scene. Her eyes are wide open, completely black. Her jaw is slack, a bit of grass still remaining in her teeth. The flower nearest her nose blows to her slow, hard huffs.
Scott’s shuffling beside me. I assume he can also feel the bile in his chest coming up, but I don’t shift my gaze. I don't know how long it takes for something to bleed out, but she looks close to it. It’s worse than I imagined it to be. There was no thud, no cries of pain. All I hear is her heavy breaths and Scott reloading beside me.
I can’t react before she’s dead. The bullet goes straight through her temple and I can hear the metal crushing through the bone. Blood seeps out through where her head sits and it just barely puddles at my shoes.
There’s a minute of silence, Scott lowering the gun and taking something out of his pocket. I look over, and he’s already etched his name next to Eugene’s on the bottom of the stock.
________________________________________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“I always thought there wasn't much I could do to separate myself from what I was born into. I’d settled on being destined to do a whole lot of nothing. In small-town Texas, our only futures were a football scholarship or Home Depot. There were no art schools, writing programs, or really any hope for kids that didn't play sports. I felt little around everyone else my age, too different to ever get out of town. I didn't see a way out. My bloodline was rooted there, and not much was expected from me anyway. It wasn't until my family moved and I lost everything I already had that I saw there were options for me. I wrote this piece to come back to kid me on the soccer field, playing as best I could, even though I hated it, in hopes I could be something someday. Separate from my mom and my dad; a full life I wanted to live.”
Born in Texas and based in South Carolina, Aspen Ross (she/her) (age 15) is a writer avid in personal anecdotes and religious imagery. Her treasured topics include grief, dysfunctional families, and anything in the South.
Buckshot
Aspen Ross Young Writers | Fiction, Winter 2025
Despite checking all the biological boxes, I’m not much of a man. I’ve got a sad pair of calves and weigh a wimpy one-twenty-four. My dad let out a heavy, shameful sigh at my first physical. He glimpsed the weight the doctor scratched below my name, “Ryan Taylor,” and told me he loved me. It was so clearly laced with pity, but it still meant a lot. It’s been years since I stepped back into a doctor's office, but his passing “love you’s” have never sounded quite the same.
____________
When my Uncle, Scott, passed off the rifle, I could feel my hand reject it. We were at his house, a humble trailer sat on an absurd amount of land. I held on, but the trigger was scratchy on my finger pad, and my palm felt too wet to keep a good grasp. He watched me fiddle with the gun for a minute, trying to explain how I’d turn the safety off.
The metal weighed my forearm down, and I felt like I was back in that doctor’s office. All the names blurred as the nurse scrolled past various files that looked familiar to me now, holding and tracing my nail over the letters etched in the rifle’s stock. The wood seemed ancient, and I wasn’t safe anymore.
____________
Today, I’ve got a new reason to be uneasy. The safety was finally off, and a brand new case of beer was settled in the fridge. Fresh from the grocery store but missing two cans. “Who the hell actually listens when they tell you ‘don’t drink and drive?’” I hear Dad say to Scott.
Scott looks uncomfortable. “Do what you want, Warner.” He’s slouched in a fold-out lawn chair, in the cup holder sits an unopened Truly. He never looks like he wants to be anywhere.
Scott’s skinny like me and, from what I know, straight-edge. His hair is brown, with a barely grown-out buzz, gray powdering his hairline. His five o’clock shadow hides his soft jawline. He and Dad never talk, but because I still reload “like a commie,” it’s all hands on deck.
It’s an okay way to reload, Scott tells me, but not in front of Dad. He had the brightest idea of enlisting, leaving his perfectly fine job and family to get carpet-bombed in the Middle East. One night, a couple of shots in, Dad told me the worst thing you could do was survive. Even so, he still slides me a pamphlet every Christmas.
It was last August that Dad and I had actually spoken—a full conversation, at least. Now and again, he’d send me a Wiki-how article on how to change a tire or unscrew a wine cork. Then, he’d told me I had potential. Twenty-two years into it, and my best was still untapped. He’d watch me blink for a moment, glaring through the shatter-like shapes in his scotch glass.
“The best way to learn is on your own,” Dad says to me, “Bring us back somethin’, anythin’.” I watch him reload the gun, and he presses it to my chest. He huffs as he steps back, “Just don’t mess up. Shoot to kill.”
He explains the right way to reload in detail; I’m sure I could pick it up if I listen. Though, as I’m pointed to the thicket behind his house, I remember I don’t. The house and the chatter disappear behind me, and I start feeling it. Light bellows down through the treetops onto me. The day is perfect, unnerving. The air is warm, and the sky is clear. The sun is hot in spots on my skin. My belly feels caved to my back, and I’m nauseous.
Gun clutched to my chest, I trek deeper through the forest, my shoes catching on emerging roots.There's a soft rustling too light to place a direction. Despite the confusion, I look around.
There’s a doe. I watch her sniff around momentarily. She’s searching like her life is new. Her wet nose glistens in the sun, it catching in her lashes as she peeks up. Her fur is a warm chestnut, her chest a faded white. We’re built similarly, tall and skinny. I can see her knees as her front leg bends up.
I’m standing behind a tree, a little clueless as I admire. I recognize that I’m supposed to do something, but my palm feels the divots of the signatures on the stock. I’ve gotten distracted by them before I know it. I look down at them, reading each name and attempting to recognize who they belong to. Most I’ve never met; they died before I was born.
But there's one I recognize. Eugene, my grandfather, has his name etched on the underside. He’s the one who passed the rifle off to Scott, who encouraged Dad to enlist. Dad was so quick with it when Grandpa mentioned the army. He told me Scott couldn’t handle things real men can. I told him he needed to get over it.
____________
Before I had left for the forest, Scott called me inside. He sat awkwardly near me on the living room couch. The whole family, extended and all, was in the dining room beside us. They chatted loudly, patiently waiting for me to bring them their meal.
Scott cleared his throat, “The game doesn’t have to be big.”
I had yet to make eye contact. I had been sickly nervous all day. “I know,” I responded lowly.
His words came out in the middle of mine, “It can be a side dish. A rabbit or bird,” no chance, “or... uh somethin’. Don’t dream too big.” He pushed his hands down his khakis, wiping the sweat.
The ceiling was high, a hollow gable. Dark, wooden beams stretched between each side. A brick chimney extended from a fireplace, covering the front wall. Two windows sat beside the fireplace, and a soft, midday light let through, but the fluorescent wall sconces drowned it out. The whole house smelled like the same cedar and patchouli, so strong I felt it in my throat. I looked back at Scott. “Is your name on the stock?”
His eyes didn’t meet mine. A little louder, I asked, “When am I supposed to put mine on there?”
Still staring off, he sighed. “Probably this evening. If you bring game back.” If I brought game back. Scott then made sure to explain all the ifs to me. Shoot the head or the heart, “mortal shots.” When I missed (he said I most likely will), follow close for another shot. As if shooting it once wasn’t hard enough.
____________
The doe comes back into my mind, and I remember I’m here for a reason. The doe’s head raises, jaw moving as she grinds down the green in her mouth.
I’m chewing on my cheek almost subconsciously. I’m not ready. How could people ever be prepared for this? My mind rapidly wanders but never leaves the subject of the doe. She’s just feet in front of me. So close, I can imagine her dropping dead, red coating the grass and seeping
deep into the soil. I wonder if the dirt would appreciate the fluid.
Just standing here, I’m freaking out in my tension. The gun almost slips from my hand as I raise it. The muzzle is pointed in the general direction of the doe; I’m not sure when I’ve got it aimed right. It’s still a difficult thing for me to maneuver. I’ve wrapped my pointer around the trigger, the other hand holding it up by the forend. My view of the muzzle’s tip is barely on her flank, near the heart, I hope.
The shot is taken, and I black out for a moment. The blast isn’t as powerful when you're practicing in a range, but in the tranquility of a forest, it shakes me by my shoulders and down to my core. I hear no rustle of the doe running away past the sheer ringing in my head, though none of dropping to the ground. As fresh in my mind as the image is, I would throw up if she had.
I don’t get to see where I hit. I open my eyes, and the doe’s blood had trickled down in a panicked line on the grass. She had fled. My eyes stay where the deer had been, and I feel her shadow continue to cast.
How am I supposed to know if the shot was mortal? She could’ve died in a bush a few steps ahead or be sprinting up a hill, fur soaked down to the skin with blood, still grinding her teeth together.
The rifle falls through my grasp, leaving me to hold it by the muzzle as I walk forward. As a squelch sounds from under my sneaker, like blood on a carpet, I pick my step up and turn for home.
When I’m back, I have nothing to show for myself except for the red I scraped off my soles before I walked inside. The sconces are dimmed. Scott meets me first, having never left his
spot on the couch. I assume somebody else saw my empty arms as I stumbled back because the dining room was void of its usual chatter. Scott’s expression doesn’t shift, though his eyes are still not on me. They’ve trailed down to the gun, its stock dragging on the ground.
“Those signatures always used to leave splinters in my hand,” he says, exhaling, “You got nothin’?”
I sit down next to him. The gun is placed on my lap and slightly on his. I had a little hope walking in to see him. “I’m sorry.” If anyone would understand, it had to be him. He hums, “Couldn’t do it? No name on the gun for you, I guess.” He picks the rifle up off my lap, looking down at the etches in the stock.
Footsteps sound out from the dining room, approaching where Scott and I are. “Ryan?” Dad says, “You came back quick, kid. What’d you get for me?” The same midday light peeks through the windows, now visible on my dad’s back.
I’m quiet. My heart beats to the surface of my ribs, my throat clogged and unable to make a sound.
“He got a deer too heavy to carry back,” Scott chimed. “He came in here to ask me for help.” He puts the rifle down to rest on the arm of the couch, struggling a little to get it sitting upright. The metal gives a heavy thump on the dark oak floor. It seems so much heavier in Scott and I’s hands.
Dad looks over at me. His dark brown hair is in strands over his forehead, the rest slicked back. I’ve cowered, standing nervously behind the couch. His face, brows furrowed and lips pursed, tells me to come to him and I oblige.
“You don’t come to ask me?” he says, urging forward. “It’ll take double of you two and only one of me to pull a buck out of a ditch.”
Scott’s face stays straight. Dad’s whole life has been fueled by jealousy and concentrated spite. His tantrums are nothing new. Bigger doesn’t matter—whoever’s older gets the gun. It’s always been that way, but Dad believes curves straighten to his will. He joined the army, married my mom, and had me all out of spite. Just to show he could do what Scott hadn’t.
Scott spits, “Does it matter? You’re in the kitchen anyway, makin’ sides with Nancy.”
Dad quiets for a moment. “Struggle, I guess. Fucks sake.” He mutters a few things to himself as he slinks back into the kitchen.
Nancy, my mom, never dares when my dad’s within legal distance. The only reason they're civil now is because of me and the pre-rolled, shinily packaged joints she keeps in her purse. She’s a good woman, another victim of his drowsy, spiteful, last-minute commitments he still can’t seem to keep up with. Half of his house is renovated. The other side’s still old.
I lived with Mom most of the time after they split. Dad came home and forgot we had existed. He never called, never let us know he was coming home, and never gave us any sign he was alive while he was deployed. Mom assumed he had died. A part of me wishes he had; things would be much less complicated. I’d be devastated, but only for a short while. Now that I’m in college, Mom’s the first house I visit for the holidays.
Scott sighs, his posture perking as he pushes out his chest before grabbing back hold of the gun. His hands are clammy and it takes effort for him to pick it up. “Let’s get on it. Before Warner pops a blood vessel.”
The forest never changes. It seems like the same few birds chirp for every inch; it’s never silent. Their sounds are sweet, reassuring that life is present no matter where you go or what you do. The leaves up above rustle with squirrels that scurry up and down the branches. The roots I trip on, the ones Scott skillfully avoids, all trail back to their respective trees. The seasons cycle, but no forest is ever dead.
As I’m daydreaming, putting meaning on things simply sitting there, Scott seatbelts me. He holds out his arm, stopping me from walking forward. The trail is in front of us. The doe had zigzagged, worming in between trees, running from a predator that fled long before she had.
“You shoot it in the leg?” Scott asks. His arm returns to his side, eyes straight forward. I’m trying to place just where the trail stops from where I stand. The blood had seeped between the blades of grass, making it hard to follow.
“I dunno,” I admit, “I panicked.”
I hear Scott sigh. He doesn't berate me, he instead tilts his head down and begins to follow the trail out. “If you shot it in the leg, it should’ve dropped not too far from here.” It doesn’t take us too long to find her. She’s collapsed underneath a tree, her torso heaving with every breath. The bullet was lodged a few inches above her front right hoof, just below the knee. Her blood has barely crusted, matted into her fur, still wet around the wound. Flesh, fur balding, flays around the entrance, the muscles deep in contracting. I watch her writhe. Frozen, I can’t take my eyes off the scene. Her eyes are wide open, completely black. Her jaw is slack, a bit of grass still remaining in her teeth. The flower nearest her nose blows to her slow, hard huffs.
Scott’s shuffling beside me. I assume he can also feel the bile in his chest coming up, but I don’t shift my gaze. I don't know how long it takes for something to bleed out, but she looks close to it. It’s worse than I imagined it to be. There was no thud, no cries of pain. All I hear is her heavy breaths and Scott reloading beside me.
I can’t react before she’s dead. The bullet goes straight through her temple and I can hear the metal crushing through the bone. Blood seeps out through where her head sits and it just barely puddles at my shoes.
There’s a minute of silence, Scott lowering the gun and taking something out of his pocket. I look over, and he’s already etched his name next to Eugene’s on the bottom of the stock.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
“I always thought there wasn't much I could do to separate myself from what I was born into. I’d settled on being destined to do a whole lot of nothing. In small-town Texas, our only futures were a football scholarship or Home Depot. There were no art schools, writing programs, or really any hope for kids that didn't play sports. I felt little around everyone else my age, too different to ever get out of town. I didn't see a way out. My bloodline was rooted there, and not much was expected from me anyway. It wasn't until my family moved and I lost everything I already had that I saw there were options for me. I wrote this piece to come back to kid me on the soccer field, playing as best I could, even though I hated it, in hopes I could be something someday. Separate from my mom and my dad; a full life I wanted to live.”
Born in Texas and based in South Carolina, Aspen Ross (she/her) (age 15) is a writer avid in personal anecdotes and religious imagery. Her treasured topics include grief, dysfunctional families, and anything in the South.