“Magenta roses!” she exclaims as I step off the bus. “My favorite!”
“Ma’am, have we met?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “But it was fun to pretend to be the lucky lady.”
That evening, my mother reaches for her second best vase, then remarks, “Your brother got me opera tickets.”
Joanna Norland is a writing coach, playwright, mother of two and mom blogger at mumswrite.com. With just enough spare time on her hands to scribble fifty fictional words a month and read two fifty word stories a day.
When we moved here, your rain boots disappeared somewhere in the garage among snowshoes, coats, and tackle boxes. “I hate this place!” you screeched whenever it rained. You stomped muddy puddles in protest. When we moved again, your boots magically reappeared. “Finally,” you said and threw them in the trash.
Justin Ho is a short story writer and novelist from Fort Collins, Colorado.
Each night, we kiss before sleep, never knowing how far-flung or profound our parting may be; our souls must traverse the myriad dimensions of distant dreamscapes. Will we become stranded on some faraway lucid shore or awaken and return, either lesser or greater, richer or poorer, to reclaim one another?
Since she could talk, Cate Covert has been regaling friends and family with her tall tales. She loves engaging with her reading audiences. Her poetry, flash fiction, and humorous stories reside at Cate Covert on Chadashah.org, and her Inspirational essays at Pastora Cate’s Corner on Substack.
Mess Sergeant Kelly, a nice old guy,
always asked us as we left the mess hall,
“What did you think of today’s chow, boys?”
We always gave the same charitable reply
just to make him smile.
Kelly was a little deaf
and couldn’t tell the difference
between “Swell” and “Swill”.
Gene Newman was a USAF cryptologist during the Korean War and is a retired engineer and journalist, including stringing for the N.Y. Times and being a crossword puzzle creator for the New York Times and USA Today.
The story of the week for July 29 to August 2 is…
In the Course of the Investigation by Bob Lucky
She shreds the cloak of past trauma. She defies present challenges.
Then, she stops fighting. She treasures her newfound peace.
A trace of sadness lingers somewhere within; the remnant is part of her now. If she lets that go, she’d be incomplete. She wouldn’t know how to grieve for herself.
Shanti Chandrasekhar writes and lives in Maryland. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Braided Way, Literary Mama, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
I look into your eyes and see your time-weathered sixty-seven years in your face. I am twenty-three, vibrant, invincible, and hopeful. To see me, you look inside, at a former self. For me to see you, I look in the mirror. We are one, wondering where all the time went.
Jannie Dziadzio is a retired Intuitive Transformational Coach whose last name is impossible to pronounce.
When I showed up for my life, it was a crime scene cordoned off with flapping yellow tape. I begged to go in. I have to find myself, I argued. It was hard to explain. Now I’m the number one suspect and may get to the bottom of things yet.
Bob Lucky is the author of My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024), My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019), Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), and Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014). He lives in Portugal.
Belly pressed against the warm sand.
Through half closed eyes, the golden hairs on my forearm bend like grass in the breeze.
The foamy ocean edge reaches up,
falls back,
tugging the sun burned memory of you out to sea.
We all swam here that day we got the call.
Dave lives in Sydney, Australia and works across various creative disciplines. Follow at instagram.com/davidnormanbonney
Transitions. His death shreds my soul, workplace “downsizing” shreds my psyche, quick sale of my children’s childhood home and extensive vegetable garden shreds my heart. On to condo living, plants in pots, popcorn at seven replaces dinner promptly at five, neighbors not known for thirty years. A geranium blooms. Transitions.
Unretiring from the same company three times, two monthly columns running in the Happenings newspaper, blessed enough to live within ‘hollerin’ distance of five children, twenty-one grandchildren, five great grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren keeps Rose’s daylight hours busy, so most writing is done after bedtime. However, her bedtime and the rest of her life has recently changed dramatically, as interpreted in this story.