She fell down the stairs yesterday. Bruised her cheek. Bloodied her nose. All she did was smile up at me from her crash at the bottom.
I flickered the moth-crazed house lights, seeking help. She laughed, then.
I floated down, but my vaporous hands couldn’t hold her. No one can.
Brenna Boytim writes about ghosts, regrets, and reveries. You can find her on Twitter at @hi_thisisbrenna.
It was next to him on the nightstand, still open, the one thing he always had with him—his Swiss Army knife.
“Can you take it?” my mother said after we’d packed everything else. “I can’t.”
I stood there staring at it, unable to take it, unable to close it.
Donald A. Ranard’s writing has appeared in 50-Word Stories, 100 Word Stories, The Atlantic, Gargoyle, Litro, The Washington Post, Every Day Fiction, and many other publications. His one-act play, ELBOW. APPLE. CARPET. SADDLE. BUBBLE., was named one of three finalists in Veteran Repertory Theater’s 2021 playwriting contest. Based in Arlington, VA, he has lived in 10 countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
“Do you think you’re seeing things that aren’t real?” my psychiatrist asked, continuously typing on his computer.
I looked at the lady standing next to him, blood stains soaked through her white gown. She blew a breath on his neck, and he scratched.
“No, I don’t. Do you?” I asked.
Wai Mei Wong is a former early childhood educator living in Toronto, Canada. She often thinks someone is watching her when she is writing horror in the middle of the night.
A bonus day with my granddaughter
Doing whatever occurs to her moment to moment
Her shameless giggling
Her quick-silver mind
Her soft-as-dough hugs
Her pillowy hand
Her huger-than-life heart
Her limitless imagination
Her endless potential
I’m the luckiest girl alive to tread this giddy path long ago and now… again.
Carol Tymann writes, reads, walks, and plays in upstate New York.
The story of the week for July 17 to 21 is…
The Healer by Beatrice Rao
and
I watch the bones sink to the bottom by J.C. Pillard
My disbelief in God has kept me alive this long.
Long enough to be set in stone, to be despaired
and unconvinced. Long enough to still taste you
on my lips. When sunlight fades, I catch glimpses
of the girl you were; mouthing private devotions
and absolution for all creation.
Alex lives in Minneapolis.
Papa truly surprised me, said it all in his native Sicilian. Never once flinched or flushed.
“Egg waits, many sperm swim madly, battle for a single triumph. Ignition. Growth. Our beautiful Stella arrives.”
My papa, a poet. You would think such intimate conversation would have been with ma. Not so.
Deborah lives and writes in northwestern Montana. She is busy creating very short pieces in between assembling scenes for a forthcoming short story.
A coyote with an injured leg is abandoned by his pack and makes his home on my university campus. Students keep our distance; heed warnings not to feed him. It would make no difference at all to his loneliness – but no one in the world is as revered, as beloved.
Amrita V. Nair is a writer and researcher. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Okay Donkey, Yuzu Press, and elsewhere, and was included in the Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems. Follow her on Twitter at @amritanairv.
Wine and beer
Friends and sand
Your neck
Your lips
Perfect moonlight
A dunk in the lake
Your warm body
I’m entangled
Even today
But we drifted away
Forty years later
I’m tempted to look for you
But the time is gone
I wonder
If you ever
Think of me
Patrick Yu is retired and from time to time likes to share 50 words.
Her fingers have started to pluck at the bedsheets, the night-nurse says. There’s time; get some rest.
Next morning, she tells me Mama seemed to be reaching out to someone, tracing lines in the air.
When I lay down beside her and took her hand, it had finished the story.
E. C. Traganas is a published novelist and poet from New York City and a Juilliard-trained concert pianist and composer by profession.