Woken in the middle of the night, her sweet dream chopped off abruptly, she slowly lifted her head and turned around to shift the quilt.
Knowing what would come next, she stretched and looked into his eyes, with their plea for love, for attention, and for Mariners Choice cat food.
Rosanne Ehrlich has been writing ever since her 9th grade English teacher accused her of plagiarism.
Uphill road home, took my breath away.
Those were the days when all we cared about were comics and candy. Silent woods, our neighbors, at this end of the Universe.
Uphill road, takes my breath away.
My walking stick, companion and confidante, my witness, holds my hand, takes me home.
Dr. Vaishnavi Pusapati wrote this story.
I have transitioned. My job hasn’t.
My sniffling mother bakes the corpse cake; I, exhausted, shape it into coffins. Mom bags the doily-shrouded caskets without bidding me goodbye. Mourners never speak to murderers.
Alone—freed—I eat my sins. Mostly the one of walking and talking long after I’m gone.
Samir Sirk Morató is a scientist, artist, and heap of flesh. Some of their work can be found in Catapult, The Dark Sire, and Rune Bear Weekly. They are on Twitter and Instagram at @spicycloaca.
“Cooking’s an art; your baking’s just science,” she says, dismissively. “I create through improvisation, substitution, by occasionally stirring or seasoning to taste.”
“You decide as you go along. My work is precise and demanding. One misstep and the whole thing is lost.”
“Soup?” she offers.
“With some bread,” I insist.
James Menges is a writer and photographer. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
The story of the week for November 14 to 18 is…
Phantom Pains by Deirdre Smith
I move the cart gently back and forth, trying to comfort you while I inspect the fruit.
Strawberries are your favourite.
I look down with a smile, expecting to see your wide eyes staring back at me.
Automatic movements from days gone by, still with me all these years since.
Deirdre Smith has dabbled in writing for as long as she can remember. She is a part-time Guidance Counsellor and all-the-time mom. She resides in the always colorful St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Six years we’ve lived together. Her creative energy, my lasting attraction. Her corner signature in every painting, my curiosity. Only her forename, the last letter extends as a straight line to the opposite side.
I finally ask why.
“I’m waiting for you to fill in the blank,” she says fetchingly.
Judith wrote this. Her writing has appeared in 50-Word Stories (sometimes only with her forename).
Her just-completed quilt billows up, then settles gently onto the floor.
Walking around it admiringly, she gives a gasp of dismay and crouches down.
There, trapped between trapezoids, one little patch stares up, accidentally upside down.
Her little mistake winks up at her. She smiles and blows it a kiss.
Like most writers and quilters, Jane is a bit of a perfectionist. She tries not to obsess about it!
that if cancer had to come, it came
now,
after the harrowing months of emptying her parents’ home,
after masks and vaccines were easy to get, and hospitals
__________nearly back to normal,
after winter’s icy threats,
after her brother’s cancer
had shown her
__________how much worse
____________________her own could be.
Jennifer L. Freed ‘s book, When Light Shifts, A Memoir in Poems, which explores the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage, was a 2022 Finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. See more on her website: jfreed.weebly.com
A period and two spaces walked into a bar. For a while, everything was fine.
The gun-toting period was itchin’ for a fight and looking for a killin’. One of the spaces took period’s pint and period ended him.
Now you know why there’s only one space after a period.
Ed Ridgley hiked to Everest Base Camp in Nepal in 2018, at age 57, also asthmatic, thus completing the number one item on his bucket list since age 10. At 17,500 feet, he wondered if any of those “you can accomplish anything” self-help gurus had ever done anything like this. But base camp was as far as he wanted to go, that was enough. Then again, who knows what enough really means?
Editor: Do one about the Oxford Comma next, Ed!