Layoff notice. Package of unopened underwear. Empty bottles of Jim Beam. Yearbook opened to page where he and his girlfriend were homecoming royalty. Mom calls out, “Keep one collared shirt.” I hang the green one in the closet. Everything else fits into one garbage bag placed outside Mom’s back door.
Jeff Harvey lives in San Diego and edits Gooseberry Pie Lit. He has recent work in trampset and Bending Genres.
Of a summer’s evening we gather around the campfire, laughing and singing the old songs. Most of all we revel in the tall tales about granddad. And as we speak, each in turn with a riotous story, he comes alive once more, his ruddy face beaming in the dancing flames.
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, his writing has appeared in dozens of reviews, journals and anthologies. His first novel, “Deadline,” was published in 2023. He can be found on Bluesky at @youngnick.bsky.social. He lives outside Chicago.
I found a bottle on a sandy beach. It was full of time. I had so many unfulfilled dreams and always told myself that was because I always had too little time. But I had to finally admit the truth when I tossed that bottle back into the endless sea.
Don Nigroni is a retired labor economist with a master’s degree in philosophy from Notre Dame.
He adored phones so much, he wished he could become one. Wanted a squircle-shaped body; gleaming, touch-sensitive skin. Wanted to be able to update and slip into pockets, to be held and gazed upon for endless hours every day. Maybe if he broke his mother’s, he could take its place.
Tim Boiteau is an award-winning writer living in Michigan with his family. He is the author of three novels, most recently The Nilwere (Grendel Press, 2024). See more at timboiteau.wordpress.com
In the nursing home, she describes what she’s been up to: floating along the canals of Venice, wandering through the streets of Rome. “I know I’m not, but I think I am,” she tells my mother.
We know she’s there, but we think she’s here, in Maryland with us.
Nina Feinberg is a writer, photographer and distance runner. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in user experience design.
I wheel Grandpa to the men’s restroom, but there’s no disabled stall. He struggles into a non-accessible one, clutching the doorframe, the toilet roll holder, reaching. I try to help, but he waves me away. I tell him I’ll wait outside. I tell him I’m here if he needs me.
Iain Grinbergs is an English professor and the author of Vanity Twist, a chapbook (Bottlecap Press).
Walking down the narrow hall, I saw moving boxes stacked outside another tenant’s open door.
“Need some help?” I asked, picking one up.
“Oh, thanks,” a woman said.
I nodded toward the half-empty apartment, then the stairs. “Are you coming or going?”
She hesitated. Massaged her hands. “I’m not sure.”
Alex R. Roman’s writing has also appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine. He doesn’t use social media.
The story of the week for July 14 to 18 is…
Paithani Shadows by Shivam Pailwan
At dusk the fireflies light their tail torches announcing the Moth, a nightly collage of distinctive creatures gathering to soulcialize.
Standing on a toadstool, Ms. Frog reads her fifty-word story from a leaf(let).
Grasshopper saws his back-legged fiddle, offering up a jig as an ode to these gilded summer evenings.
Maria Miller gave up obsessive Solitaire for a much more satisfying 50-wording habit.
In my household, you could not get away with saying things like “I cried at your story,” unless you are drunk, and it’s snowing, on Christmas morning, the one on which you are leaving for basic training, and the person you are talking to is your mother. Apologizing. Half-laughing, half-sobbing.
Erick Lima is a wanderer and a writer.