Poverty’s chasing me. Getting closer all the time.
Bills due. Check spent. Emergency funds gone. Fridge’s close to empty.
Then something breaks. Again.
Doing without becomes second nature. Rolled coins, coupons, and the dollar store become tricks of the trade. Keeping poorness at bay. And I make it… this month.
Alyce Clark is adjusting to sheltering in place, practicing social distancing when shopping for essentials… and truly missing her grandmother.
Greetings from July 2020. I’m watching a stickleback build his nest: his hustling, bustling busyness, his lips tug-kissing at leaves, his eyes turned blue and throat bright red with love. I really hope that, by the time this finds you—whenever, wherever you are—you can still watch stickleback too.
Michelle Christophorou’s short fiction has won and been placed in competitions, including the latest Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, and the Retreat West Fire-themed flash competition, for which she received a ‘Best of the Net’ nomination 2019. In another life, Michelle practised law in the City of London. Tweets @MAChristophorou
My father struggled for air, his heart crushing the life from him. In the gloom, he was utterly alone.
I came to his bedside momentarily, whispered prayers for his soul. His breathing slowed down, calmed.
He closed his eyes. An unearthly voice spoke in his ear. And finally, he believed.
Clarisse de Jesus is the daughter of an author of a book on atheism. Follow the musings of her meandering mind at autumnleavesnowfalls.wordpress.com.
Today, I am not coming home, you might as well rent my space out. I’ve found a home in someone else, and I’m not sorry I left the way I did. You have a choice to forgive and let me love another. As of today, I am dead to you.
Klyn Akwarandu is a multifaceted writer. He writes screenplays, poetry, books, blogs, short stories and music. He is usually associated with his pen name, “KLYNIC.” You can read his books on Wattpad and follow his writing at klynic.blogspot.com.ng.
Thirty-four hours and one needle submerged in the spine later, the doctor tells her patient to push.
“Yes! Yes! More! More!” She chants and suctions.
A gurgling cry. “Look at all that hair!”
Kneading at the freshly emptied womb, she pauses.
No.
She steels herself and calls for four units.
Joree writes professionally in her role as director of external affairs for a statewide nonprofit, but her favorite muses are her two-year-old son and her tender memories.
Finally I settled for the materials on hand. A creased and coffee-stained envelope opened face down. A hotel pen leaking onto my fingerprints. I wrote DEAR JOHI across the folds before running from the ward.
There was no room for N. Sometimes a relationship doesn’t get halfway through the alphabet.
JR Walsh writes in landlocked Idaho, but itsjrwalsh.com floats everywhere.
The largest meal I’ve ever eaten was grief.
Served up to me on a grey platter, no cutlery. I tore it apart with my hands, angry and devouring, stuffing sharp pieces into my mouth, handful over handful, until I began to choke.
It took months to digest.
Amy Twigg is a writer living in the UK who likes to explore female relationships and anything mildly haunting. Follow her at @aetwigg.
Paying for company isn’t new to Alfred.
His father shoehorned him into a high position in the family business, and Alfred was keen to splash his cash about town. He dated, he married, he dated some more.
These days company is in the form of a television, programs carefully chosen.
Laura Besley writes short fiction in the precious moments that her children are asleep. Her fiction has appeared online, as well as in print and in various anthologies. Her flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers, was published in March 2020. She tweets at @laurabesley.
He knelt, burying
his face in her waist,
the knowledge
of how many times he’d die
for her
choking
so he
could only say
you have no idea.
Held fast, she
(looking out the misted glass
at the crabapple trees with their pink heads
thinning)
echoed
you have no idea.
Celine Low lives in Singapore, a tiny country in Southeast Asia with a hodgepodge of cultures. She holds an MA in English Literature and loves to dance and take long walks. Her works have appeared in Blood Moon Rising Magazine and 9Tales From Elsewhere.
Frank used to hold shells to his ear so that he could hear the sea. But there are no shells here.
He’s not sure why Mom likes this place. There’s no beach. No swimming. No nothing.
If Mom keeps smiling though, Frank thinks he won’t really mind about the shells.
Ben lives in Dallas where he is viewed with tolerant amusement by his wife and two small boys. He has just started writing micro fiction and hopes to get better at it.