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Postage

Story by Kate Petersen January 9, 2017

Art by Dylan Haigh

Without warning, the price of stamps began to drop. After inching up and up her whole life. Few others noticed right away, since everyone was looking at their phones, even at the post office. Still, forever, which she’d never bought anyway, came to mean something slightly different, and each day after there was a little less of it to press against and hold.

About the Author

Kate Petersen was raised in Arizona. Her work has appeared in New England Review, Kenyon Review, Zyzzyva, The Collagist and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Stegner Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, and teaches at Stanford as a Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing.

About the Artist

Dylan Haigh was born and raised in Newmarket, NH  before escaping at 17 to Boston, then New York, and finally, North Carolina. He returned to the seacoast in 2009 to open Haigh and Martino, a design studio in downtown Portsmouth which he founded with his wife, Kristy.

This story appeared in Issue Fifty-Five of SmokeLong Quarterly.
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue Fifty-Five
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The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest

Deadline November 15th!

The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest (The Mikey) is now an annual competition celebrating and compensating the best micro fiction and nonfiction online.

The grand prize winner of The Mikey is automatically nominated for Best Small Fictions and any other prize we deem appropriate. In addition, we will pay the grand prize winner $1000. Second place: $500. Third place $300. Finalists: $100. All finalists and placers will be published in the December ’25 issue of SmokeLong.

Previously published as well as previously unpublished work will be considered.