On the edge of crippling pressures, I find myself in contemplation, sailing towards another dilemma, in front of a glass and spoon. Remedy: fill them.
The percolation dissolves my island, my mind, melting swiftly. I savour the paradox. Finer moments when walls of worries disappear, mesmerised by spoonfuls of affogato.
Verity Always wrote this story.
She is robed in green velvet, her tresses seaweed in the spindrift. Her lips pour forth songs and laments. Buffeted by storms and bathed in blood, still she welcomes strangers to her door to share peat-warmed poetry, potatoes, stout and good craic. She is gentle generosity. Her name is Ireland.
Rosie has been writing for fun all her life. She is from London, England, a city she hates – yet she is continually drawn back there.
Every night he’d slept frozen stiff in cramped spaces. He just wanted to be warm.
But why not try on a suit, some comfortable shoes?
When he heard security coming through the aisles, he quickly struck a pose.
They passed him by, oblivious.
Now he poses all day—inside, warm.
Nathan Alling Long’s collection of fifty short fictions, The Origin of Doubt, was a 2019 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Nathan lives in Philadelphia.
They’d talk about
How I have little
To no friends.
How I liked being alone
Most of the time.
They’d say I’m an introvert.
Whether or not,
It shouldn’t suppose to be
Their business.
They’d even say I’m a weirdo.
But deep down,
I know I’m not.
I’m just
different.
Jace Livscot is an aspiring writer.
The story of the week for June 6 to 10 is…
Adrift in Timeless Affection by Bob Thurber
It was invigorating meeting you, and we shared the exhilaration of hiking in the wilderness, where earth meets sky. But before the end of our first night on the mountain, I glimpsed into your backpack. My heart froze as you broke into a smile.
I guess there is no Paradise.
Katherine Darlington has articles in many publications including poetry anthologies, and literary journals. She also has several published novels. See more of her work at www.katherinedarlington.com.
They go through us like tissue paper. They throw us at their enemies, problems, and mishaps. We are tools, not people. We exist to serve and to play a part in their stories. We are narrative.
They say the red uniform distinguishes us. I say it just hides their sins.
Gillian Moran wrote this story.
Teddi plunged into the autumn sea. She breached, spluttering. I couldn’t chicken out.
We dressed: wet goosebumps, grey lips. She turned away, unlike when we were teens.
We reached the road. If she’d been single, I could have asked.
When I drove to drop her off, the road had flooded.
Christina Nordlander was born in 1982 and lives outside Birmingham with her husband and two cats. Her writings primarily fall within the speculative fiction spectrum.
Clickity-clack, clickity-clack, clickity-clack, eight hours a day (with a break for lunch). Room 318 is for female employees only, home to the typing pool, where idle chit-chat is frowned upon. Margin bells add a change of percussion to the symphony of female workers at the bottom of the corporate ladder.
Roberta Beach Jacobson is drawn to the magic of words – poetry, puzzles, song lyrics, flash fiction, stand-up comedy.
On the plane going home from a B&B in Amsterdam, my soon-to-be discarded partner continues his unending diatribe. I lean over and move my body closer to him to hide the fact of my distaste, boredom, and dislike of him. Fake it until I escape it, I say to myself.
Rosanne Ehrlich’s work has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Persimmon Tree, Panoplazine, The Voices Project, and Quillkeeper’s Press’ Rearing in the Rearview.