"Keep Your Visions to Yourself" by Kathryn Kulpa / Trampset Literary Journal
- Short Story Shoutout
- Apr 1
- 3 min read
Don't give them 4, give them 2 + 2.
The focal point of Kathryn Kulpa’s story “Keep Your Visions to Yourself” (in Trampset Journal) is its unabashed emotionality, its Stevie Nicks-ness. This super-short story (450 words) is immediately celebratory about a particular type of foolishly-close relationship, the kind that dangles bare feet out car windows, where “toes danc[e] in the wash of exhaust-scented highway air.”
“We wanted a world full of drama and magic. Held seances in basements, planted mysterious clues under loose boards in buildings, made fake flyers for parties that weren’t going to happen and left them under windshield wipers on parked cars. We wanted lightning to strike.”
But as is the case with most efficient vehicles, what’s quietly purring under the hood is a V8 story-engine that’s sucking us right into its intake manifold. There are so many intriguing questions right off the bat. Who is the “we” here? We don’t get the main character’s name, or the name of her bestie. And what’s the deal with their “auxiliary parents”? What’s going on, exactly, with “your dad, my mom”?
In love-story-after-movie/TV show/novel-love-story, we can see the main plotline love relationship coming from a mile away. We’re bludgeoned with one character’s loneliness as we shuffle along with them and their stained sweatpants through a studio-apartment-hermitage. Then we tolerate tab A’s insufferable meet-cute with slot B. And we throw up in our mouths a little when the couple-in-progress starts finishing each other’s sentences.
But Kulpa doesn’t give us any of that. She lets us do the work. We’re left to figure everything out. And because we’re the detectives, the story becomes ours. We are co-creators.
Screenwriter Andrew Stanton summarizes this phenomenon clearly in his Unifying Theory of Two Plus Two (go to 6:35 – 8:00 for the meat of the clip:)
“Make the audience put things together,” he tells writers. “Don’t give them four. Give them two plus two.” It’s a great way to ensure a reader’s engagement.
You could say that showing us a lonely soul in stained sweatpants is a two, and that lines up nicely with the two of a meet-cute—but the larger issue is cliché. And it’s another reason why Kulpa’s story is bracing. She gives us a different kind of love story. We don’t know we want the love story between two kids pushed together by their parents’ affair (“your dad, my mom”) until we get it.
And more please! The love story of the tween boy and his box turtle, maybe. Or the tortured triangle between a newly remarried mom, her introverted stepson, and her jealous biological daughter. We have no idea where those stories will take us because we haven’t heard them yet.
Kulpa gives us girl meets girl, girl loses girl, girls go-their-own-way. And as a bonus, we get the fully fleshed out tragedy of “your dad, my mom” in a few broad strokes and a truckload of subtext. All in four-hundred-and-fifty words.
It’s sweet love story relief.
Trampset Literary Journal is looking for short fiction (short stories, flash fiction and excerpts from longer works) that are no longer than 3,000 words. They’re open to all styles of work “though shorter pieces tend to get more love.” They have a permanent free submission category, as well as “Tip jar” and “Quick Response” options (which funds their writers and editors). They pay $30 for accepted pieces and nominate some work for anthologies (Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Pushcart).
They have not opened for 2026 submissions yet, but bookmark them here so you’re ready when they are.
More from Kathryn Kulpa at her website.
Thanks, Kathryn and Trampset, for “Keep Your Visions to Yourself”!
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