This month, we’ve got assisted suicide, Socrates, and tea and tarot. To submit a first line, email booklifeeditor@booklife.com.

A Different Story

Ralph Albert Gessner

“We are all born needing Love, and how we find it, or don’t, makes us who we are.”

Instant Wisdom

Beth Burgess

“Socrates was famous for a few things: sporting an astonishingly curly beard, rarely bothering with footwear, pondering, and stopping total strangers in the street to quiz them on their beliefs.”

The New Magic

Joseph Malik

“Heggy was a sloppy, mop-headed boy with a wonderful laugh and no last name.”

Rebirth: Self-Transformation over Tea and Tarot

Mary-Claire Hanlon

“In the beginning was the fool.”

Jerkwater

Jamie Zerndt

“There were spots in the lake where the anchor never hit bottom.”

When I Killed My Father

John Byrne Barry

“Lamar Rose slipped a folded postcard between the strike plate and latch bolt of the sixth-floor stairwell door.”