They walked the same streets day after day. The city’s beat pulsed through their veins. They welcomed the same sun, were drenched by the same rain. The scent of takeout followed them home along the same familiar path. Sometimes, their eyes met. Other times, not. They were strangers, yet neighbors.
Christa Lyon-Moon spends her free time crafting flash fiction that finds meaning in small moments where imagination meets real life.
He called. Nineteen years later.
She picked up on the second ring. Like she’d been waiting. Which maybe she had.
He recited what he’d practiced.
She was quiet.
“I know,” she said. “What else?”
He hadn’t expected that.
“Here’s what you’ll do,” she sighed. “Lose my number. Stay away. Goodbye.”
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.
I close my eyes and listen for your voice over the rainfall.
Welcome to Artemesia Station. The next train at Platform 7A is the 4:23 PM service to Poseidon and Triton Riverside.
You are gone forever, but the tempo of your recorded words soothes the hurt for just a moment.
Minh-Tam Le is a physician assistant living in Winston-Salem, NC. Her work has most recently appeared in Snapdragon A Journal of Art and Healing, and she was a winner in the Writer’s Digest 20th Annual Poetry Awards, Chapbook category.
He has flown too high, can feel the blaze of the sun melting the wax from his wings. As he tumbles downwards, feathers loose and swirl. He thinks of his father, straightens his arms, and stretches out his legs until he gannet-breaks the water and comes up, smiling his joy.
Clodagh O Connor lives in Dublin, Ireland and has always loved reading. She is working on becoming a writer, but constantly distracts herself with wet felting, origami, bird watching, cycling, haiku writing, baking, reading and internet rabbit holes.
Tears soak the freshly turned earth beneath her knees.
Her womb flutters gently, like the butterfly hovering over his flowers.
Fresh-cut daisies, white like surrender, mark his gravestone.
She wipes away her tears and steels her aching spine, leaving empty.
No.
She leaves, but she is not empty.
Daisy.
Theirs.
Collette Night is an Australian writer who crafts lyrical fiction with bite. Her work has been featured in various online and print publications. When not writing, she can be found juggling motherhood while drinking obscene amounts of caffeine.
I learned from you to lure them in by radiating loneliness. To cup them gently in my hands so I wouldn’t crush their small wings. To whisper my last goodbye and let them go. I still heed your words every time I catch one. After all, it might be you.
Alyson Floyd is a writer, poet, and amateur zine-maker drifting around the east coast.
We used to bike to the canal, improv outrageous cat symphonies. Wind rippling the water, we kept time with shadows creeping up walls.
Now we meet on screens the size of our hands. Exchange thumbs, hearts, yawns.
“Meet me at the canal?” I text.
Purring, you bat away my phone.
Michelle Wilson’s words have appeared in Wigleaf, Gooseberry Pie Lit, The Daily Drunk, Bending Genres, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Rejection Letters, Maudlin House, Litro Magazine, 50-Word Stories, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among others. Her story ‘Fish Brain’ was nominated for Best of the Net 2022. She lives with her partner in Washington, DC. Read more of her work at michellekwilson.wordpress.com.
As the minister talks well of her mother, she can only remember the insults. Sit straighter. Lose some weight. Who will want you? You got yourself a man? You don’t look good in white.
She hides her smile in the front pew. You are right, mother. Black suits me best.
N.J. Chan is a Toronto-based writer of short stories, essays, and poems. Her work has been published in magazines, journals, and an anthology, including most recently in the international editorial collective NüVoices. She received a second-place win with Flash Fiction Magazine and an honourable mention in 2023 Askew’s Word on the Lake Anthology (under the name Natalie J. Chan). See more @njchan_author.
Sometimes, looking out the window at passing trees pushes the boundaries of anxiety. The little one in the backseat senses this as I open the moonroof.
“Those aren’t the good trees.”
You’re right, dear, those are not the good trees.
I don’t remember when we last saw the good ones.
Kristie Macris writes occasionally as she splits her time between Seattle and Nice. Very strong NDAs keep her from admitting to anything she wrote before she mostly retired.
Once, I caught a rust-red crawdad in the muddy forest creek. I took him home to a plastic tank, where his red bled out to deathly white. Crying salt, I buried him in the garden.
I only watch the crawdads now, their ruby bodies moving fast beneath the water’s surface.
J.C. Pillard is a writer and editor living in Colorado. Her work has been published in Hearth Stories, Abyss & Apex, Corvid Queen, and elsewhere. When not writing, J.C. can be found gardening and playing too much D&D. Find more of her work at jcpillard.com.