The story of the week for June 21 to 25 is…
Dot to Dot by Laura Dobson
PAULINE RENDALL: A Fleeting Glance
I saw the creature dart into the woods. A fawn, I thought. The sun gleamed on its back for a second, then it was gone.
I watched as you got into the car. No sunlight gleamed this time, just dark clouds gathering overhead. But you were gone, just the same.
Pauline writes mostly crime, and has a novel published on Kindle. She also enjoys working in very short bites.
ALYCE CLARK: Fairies Are Real
“Fairies are real!” she insisted, with a five-year-old’s unwavering conviction.
“I’ve never seen them,” I said.
“Wait,” she said, exasperated, leaving the room.
She returned, triumphantly, handing me a blue pillow, covered in stars like it was sacred.
“Here, use this! I see them every night when I fall asleep.”
This story was written by Martha’s granddaughter. Alyce will always be grateful for the 95 years of joy Martha brought to the family. She always made everyone feel special and loved. Alyce will miss her.
ROSALEEN LYNCH: Cardiac Ablation
Cardiac ablation is the art of treating heart rhythm irregularities with freezing. Not like musical statues at our wedding, where the music stops, you freeze, and when it starts you dance. There will be scars. These stop abnormal impulses. Nothing reaches that part of the heart again. The feeling’s gone.
Rosaleen Lynch, an Irish community worker and writer in the East End of London, has words in lots of lovely places and can be found on Twitter at @quotes_52 and 52Quotes.blogspot.com.
HOWIE GOOD: Götterdämmerung
I glance at the sign outside the church when I should be watching the road. Love Like Jesus, it says. A nice sentiment, I think, as the sun goes down in a profusion of toxic colors, like a ship full of chemicals burning intently at the edge of the world.
Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).
STELLA FERNANDEZ: Under an Apple Tree
On a warm summer day,
I lay down under an apple tree.
Slowly dozing away,
I remembered the good old days
and wished to be younger again
to experience the joy,
I once had.
Suddenly, I realized:
One day, I will remember today
and will wish to relive it again.
Stella Fernandez loves reading and writing.
EVAN HARRIS: Portable Skills
From the narrow galley behind a testy espresso machine, the beautiful seeker kid navigates coworkers, regulars, the tip game, and a sprained left ankle. Nose manual nollie shuv out. A fluke. Time heals, youth conceals, and this one’s already gaining the precipice, getting a decent jump on the unknowable gap.
Evan Harris is the author of The Quit.
MARIA CARGILLE: Self-Portrait in Season
My skin is late summer:
all golden sunsets
stained with raspberry,
stretched over pale tendrils of green.
My eyes are early autumn:
storm grey from a distance,
golden-green-blue up close.
And my hair is the last colors
before winter,
brown glimmering with fierce but faded
red and ochre and chime.
Maria is enormously fond of all the seasons. She’s enchanted by scurrying cloudscapes, and wildflowers that thrive in improbable places.
LAURA DOBSON: Dot to Dot
He leaves you both behind with the unanswered question of why. For some incommunicable reason, you conclude that your primary purpose now is to solve it. You pore over the plotted points of your shared timeline, charcoal pupils darting between them: frantic, determined, and leaving behind a spider’s laboured trail.
Laura works as a secondary school pastoral assistant and relishes sharing the therapeutic potential of the arts with young people. She writes to navigate life’s more painful moments and, although she has attended a writers’ group for over a year, has yet to find the courage to share her own work.
RUTH MANNINO: Coming to Terms
Married too soon, she lost herself. She became we; we became they. Over the years, there was no room for her.
Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. Grandmother.
Walking the line between solitude and loneliness, she hopes to come to terms with which was preferable. Waiting for answers, she begins to write.
Ruth Mannino is a retired math teacher, tutor, and business analyst, who has always loved to write. Meditation and mindfulness being a part of her everyday life, in 2020, she published Thursday Mornings: Breathe, Stretch, Listen, Love, a series of interviews she conducted with senior members of her chair yoga class. She has just discovered flash fiction and finds it motivating.