ท้องฟ้า/Thong Fah

Every morning since I’d been in Phuket, my mom and I had woken up to staggeringly bright sun strewn across the bedroom and dead animals outside. A crushed snail smeared across the walkway tile. A garden snake overheated on the asphalt edge of the road to the beach. But my mom and I were getting along so well. Everything else was so idyllic. At first we didn’t talk about it.

"Toad Mountain" is the winner of the 2026 Louis Begley Prize, judged by Andrew Krivák.

Big John stood near me with the electric blue above us, screaming out with its shine for everyone to drink it. Lines of neon stretched and twisted into a beauty of advertising brilliance. We were drinking it and the bottles were sweating and it made me feel good for the first time all day.

Dear Miranda,

I often feel that with every day a multitude of days come between us, promising that for every hour unspent with you, months will follow. As such, I know you will likely not see me here; we will never cross the Weeks bridge arm-in-arm like Elizabeth and Jane, as two honest people. What’s more, ***’s party made it apparent, I realize you don’t know much of who I am, other than the 12 years we lived together—half of which are lost to the childhood imaginal irreality that confuses dream and waking life. I, however, remember the day you were born. Am I a stranger? How do you remember me, when I was 18 and you were 12? I don’t wish to be remembered, for even then I was not myself as I am now. Are you yourself? Forgive my questions, I don’t remember how to speak to you. Perhaps then, I will only tell you of the things you will miss as the days breed years.

Kiara Barrow and Rebecca Panovka graduated from Harvard College and are both alumni of the Harvard Advocate; Barrow—former President, and Panovka—Fiction Board member. Following their graduation in 2016, the two were inspired to start The Drift after noticing the shortcomings of leftist discourse following the 2016 election.

As its name implies, The Drift responds to the times and reacts to them. Since its launch in 2020, the magazine has garnered significant national recognition and a dedicated readership. The magazine has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Nylon, and Harvard Magazine. But even as they grow out of their darling status, The Drift remains committed to being an intellectual arm for critically engaged inquiry around culture, literature, and politics.

I asked the board to generate a question they would ask their fear. CBT and creative writing prompt books sold at Barnes & Noble seem to have re-connotated this kind of exercise, so no one entertained me. Instead they made many thoughtful-but-sprawling remarks on fear writ large that I have done my best to pin down and translate into generative questions. Below is our response to ourselves. —Tess Wayland, Features Editor 2025

/ zugunruhe

a flock has like a million birds
synced up with their neighbors,
knowing precisely the distance
between them, before they even
move. Home for the holidays,
I saw this. Stopped on Pendleton
Pike, tittles on all the powerlines,
a murmur above the trees, charged
up like mallets on a batterhead, drum-
rolling up under the setting sun.
Too far to crack if they were
grackles or cowbirds, but they all
looked black to me. Oh starlings,
it is so hard to pick one of you
from your crowd or congregation.
Then a thunder without rain, they
hang out suspended in the air. They
lose each other and themselves, but
the distance is settled, by something
they know by heart. Suddenly, they’re
all coming or going the same way.

Warm for a fish,
The kingqueen of egglayers,
Innards sluicing round deckheight
Stain the waders of a bearded fisherman.
He slices clean the belly
With a curved tip razorknife gently,
Calls her gorgeous, kisses
Her whiskers whispers creekside
admiral admiral admiral admiral.
She expects that every man
Will do his slicing right.

THE MARTINI DID NOT FIX ME!
I JUST REEK OF SPILLED OLIVE BRINE
AND THE COUNTER IS ALL STICKY
WITH HAPHAZARD VERMOUTH AND GIN.