The train moves. They wave to Tato on the platform.
“What’s there?” Mama asks.
Unfurling a fist of pebble, broken seashells, her daughter says, “Where we go, I’ll show the home I have left. Someday, I’ll return these to Odesa’s beach, or put them at Tato’s grave.”
Their seven-year-old knows.
Judith wrote this. Her heart breaks seeing Ukrainian refugees pick up their lives.
The fresh morning reminds me of the bright future I wish to see. Three days after the super typhoon hit our riverside abodes, I’m floating somewhere in the ocean. The nearest land’s shadow is still concealed from here. But I feel the waves are slowly pushing me towards the shore.
While teaching Religious studies to senior high school students in one of the universities in the Philippines, Jose Joel Robles loves to write stories. As a husband and father, Jose utilizes some of his spare time in writing. He’s a new writer.
The tide lapped over a dozen salmon, their chests heaving. Compassion bloomed in my chest. We untangled them carefully from our Tribe’s net. I whispered heartfelt prayers of gratitude. Remembering:
“Salmon come to us,” my elders taught us. “We must respect them, so they come back to us, every year.”
Fern Golden (they/them or she/hers) is a disabled Dena’ina Athabaskan artist from Alaska. Their writing navigates the confluences of culture and language, ecology and belonging, and chronic illness and healing.
Nothing is certain: the woman feels hurried; the town, crowded.
I hear skinder, loosely narrated; newspaper prints anonymous obituary; neighbor discovers their spaniel dead; maid finds pillow in trash.
Only if the children are to be believed. They find the ghost of her husband on the outskirts, snoring too loudly.
Mandira Pattnaik’s work has appeared in print and online journals in fifteen countries. Find her at mandirapattnaik.com.
The story of the week for April 18 to 22 is…
My Suitcases by Roya Nouraei
The silence shuffles. His heart leaps to his throat.
He dares not turn, lest the package rustle, but he twists his eyeballs till they hurt and there stands Big Sister.
Heart slides back to his toes, eyes squeezing shut… never to see the manicured hand also creeping for a taffy.
Marigold Packwood is just a plain girl. Lover of writing and all things written.
Only after he died did I find the mask. The cracked, clay façade my father put on every day. Put on to appease the world. To earn their mercy. Their bigoted praise. But how broken he was underneath. Weeping to be loved, given justice for who he had always been.
Dorian J. Sinnott is a graduate of Emerson College’s Writing, Literature, and Publishing program, currently living in New York with his two cats. He is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association and Horror Authors Guild. Dorian’s work has appeared in over 200 literary magazines and journals around the world and has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Eric Hoffer Book Award.
How fast the clock’s hands run to the finish line of my motherland’s life.
How innocently my belongings gaze back at me, like orphans, begging me: “Please, pick me.”
My suitcases, these memorable treasures, have become the smallest bags in the world.
Why won’t all of me fit into them?
Roya is a mother of three who immigrated to Sydney Australia eleven years ago. She has more than 100 poems, stories, and plays. Her academic education is in statistics and planning and she has more than 20 years of experience in data analysis and management.
It’s a habit:
looking out my kitchen window.
Checking to see if my neighbor’s car is parked.
Relief when I see it,
Knowing he’s safe.
Irene never returned
from the trip to PA
for her chemo treatments.
Hit a tree.
Took days to discover.
Broke in to rescue her dog.
Ruth Mannino is testing her hand at writing poetry for April’s poetry month. She learned more about Irene after she died, than when she was living next door. Isaac, her dog, was adopted by a good man and his family.
I browsed the rack of photos and flicked through the plastic wallets for something suitable. Perhaps a meaningful word this time? The end of a relationship should be marked in some way.
“See anything you like?” he asked. I caught his eye—bright blue, long, dark lashes.
“Not today, thanks.”
Jenny Logan lives in Edinburgh. She has stories selected for Dark Rose Press anthologies and is featured in Friday Flash Fiction. Jenny enjoys watching grand sumo and cross stitches mini-masterpieces.