The story of the week for January 26 to 30 is…
The Astronaut by Sarp Sozdinler
PATRICIA MORTENSON: The Magic Tree
Early in life I found a climbing tree.
I was entranced. I was enhanced.
I climbed from branch to branch.
I always brought a book with me.
I spent hours in that tree
Living in my fantasy
Until my mother called to me,
Forcing me to reality
And my responsibility.
Between one adventure and another,
Morocco, Tahiti, and Brazil
Zip-lining on St. Maartins.
The quiet is a space to fill.
And memories
Will fill the bill.
Eighty-two years old
And past her prime,
She writes poetry
To fill the time.
STEVEN HOLDING: Saccharine
You said I was soft.
A marshmallow. A cowardly custard. A yellow-bellied jelly baby. Such sweet descriptions for something so distasteful.
You called me sugar and I hoped it was because you thought I’d rot your teeth.
Better face the fact that I’m full fat. Putting the die into diet.
teven Holding lives in the United Kingdom. His story TURNING A TRICK appears in the collection BLOODLUST from Black Hare Press. You can follow his work at stevenholding.co.uk.
DESIREE S BROWN: The Grieving and Ambitious
Magic had weight that could break a grieving mind, effectively ending any wizard’s career.
Professor Henley drew an incantation in the air. Finger-like tendrils seeped out of the pentagram and lurched into his skull, hungry for memory.
He thought of his wedding. His children being born.
The spell groaned, sated.
Desiree S. Brown is a poet and author from California. She writes when the world sleeps and her toddler’s are pacified. Her recent work, Untroubled, was published in Redrosethorns magazine. Find her on Substack at Desi’s Narrative.
SOPHIA BARAN: To Heavens We Can’t Reach On Our Own
A crow snatches the dead body of a fat rat in a nondescript alleyway. The rat is too big, but the bird is determined. On wobbly wings, the crow carries its passenger into the air towards a hazy sun that the dead rat cannot reach with its pink toes alone.
Sophia Baran is a writer with a fondness for trail running with her dog and squawking at birds along the way.
SUSANNA BLAGROVE: Afterbirth
Count fingers and toes. Kiss palm. Change diaper. Breast feed. Pat back to burp. Pat back to sleep. Swaddle in crib. Try to sleep? Clean. Wash Dishes. Eat food? Pump breast. Post partum exercises. Count fingers and foes. Miss talking to people. Choke on the silence. Scream when she does.
Susanna Blagrove is a Jamaican writer and poet. Beside her love affair with books and the beach, you can always find her crooning at karaoke.
JESSICA ZMUDA: It’s winter when Lake Superior eats my husband
His ghost looms over my shoulder as a sailor pockets my wedding ring and promises me passage.
The sailor’s cigarette glows orange, embers eating tobacco down to the filter.
A push, and the lake eats him, too.
If I sail far enough, my husband whispers, I will find him waiting.
Jessica Zmuda is an anthropology graduate, museum enthusiast, and aspiring author living in St. Louis. She shares these on Instagram at @jess.reads.too.much.
SUSAN R BARCLAY: The Extinction of Family Dinner
The dinosaurs stomp across the terrain foraging and eating fish, plants, other dinosaurs. Whatever is in their path and delicious. Communal feasting on a vast array of abundance. That is until asteroids smash into the earth. No more foraging; dinner is done.
Now, eons later, I’m setting my table for one.
Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Susan R. Barclay makes persistent attempts at witticism and stories; sometimes she is successful. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming, in the The Blue Nib, Vine Street Press, Defuncted Journal, Write Time, Paragraph Planet, Witcraft, Workers Write, 50-Word Stories, and the 42 Stories Anthology.
CHUDY EBIRINGA: The Color of Our Love Story
The color began light pink. Our love was budding. Ecstatic!
Then it turned hot pink. Deep love. Memorable romantic days. I smiled when ever I saw you. Sweetness all over.
Few years later, pale red. You began to avoid me. You tossed our dates.
Now it’s gray.
Sweetheart, what happened?
Chudy Ebiringa is an author who writes across genres. He won the first prize for the Eaton Literary Agency Short Story contest for the year 2020.
LF GRAUBARD: Akari’s Note
Akari Osaka got her first violin at four. Crooked pigtails, bow trembling like a nervous bird. Her father, a Nisei, sat cross‑legged, watching her saw through “Twinkle, Twinkle” like scripture. He didn’t clap. He just nodded once, slow — the same nod he gave remembering patrols in Italy with the 442nd.
L.F. Graubard is a noir‑jazz writer whose work explores illness, trauma, institutional logic, and moral absurdity. His fiction has appeared in ExPat Press, and his flash piece “The Insecticide Parade” is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly (March 2026). He is completing a novel‑length cycle set within the federal prison and medical systems.