Nobody tells you how much parenting you’ll do on stairs. (And, me, scared of heights.) From tying shoelaces, to exploring Souter Lighthouse, to throwing socks at one another.
Now I sit on the stairs outside your room, waiting for the WhatsApp message that’ll say you’re not coming over this weekend.
James Whitman writes from Sunderland. There are twenty-six stairs in his home, and he has parented on every single one of them.
The grandfather clock struck five, and Jack went to the window. The wild ones were crepuscular and attacked only at twilight. Closing the steel blinds, he noticed black dots on the prairie. The herd was gathering under the blood-red glow.
“How many more sunsets?” Jack wondered, returning to his armchair.
Nelly Shulman authored three short story collections. Her work in numerous literary magazines.
“I want to be a writer,” she said. She feared they’d try to stop her. But they didn’t. Her teacher promised to help.
“That’s wonderful!” exclaimed Mom. Grandma’s face lit up.
Dad set up a desk for her.
So she pulled the keyboard toward her.
Nothing happened to the paper.
Michaele Jordan wrote this story.
Same bus route to college; nothing had changed. New cargo jeans, angled bob haircut, laptop rucksack; ready for the semester.
At home, a single wineglass by the sink; the garage was full of old yearbooks, bikes.
Heavy backpacks jostled; she studied her course schedule: same college as sixty-five years before.
Ellen Townsend is an art teacher and writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, Friday Flash Fiction, 50-Word Stories and others.
Joe shuffles to water’s edge to see the sunset. He’s retired, widowed, nearly broke.
A pastel sky bleeds away into twilight, into grayscale, into an impossible inkiness.
He’s alone, except for the loons who call out from the terrible void. Joe suddenly understands what they’re saying but doesn’t dare answer.
Hawkelson Rainier lives in the American Midwest. He dabbles in prose and poetry from time to time.
Drippy red wax stained the white carpet where the lava lamp leaked after it tumbled off the table and cracked open when Sandy kicked it while demonstrating for her ten-year-old daughter the one-handed cartwheels she performed at high school football games before she got pregnant and had to quit cheerleading.
Rita Riebel Mitchell writes in the Pinelands of South Jersey where she lives amongst the trees with her husband. Her work appears in HAD, Flash Fiction Magazine, Versification, and more. Find her at ritariebelmitchell.com/friday-micro.
Under desks, grit grinds into bare knees. The teacher whispers, this is practice, remember. Somebody’s phone vibrates, a familiar hymn. In the darkness, Jamir passes a cough drop to a crying first grader, palm to palm like communion. After, in the light, nobody mentions it. We line up, unbelievably gentle.
Brandon McNeice is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Plough, Front Porch Republic, Beyond Words, The Rush Magazine, and Flash Frog.
Just for a change, Norman stood and waited at a different bus stop this morning. The next stop after his usual one.
Alone, he waited and waited. The bus was late.
Looking down the street, Norman saw his bus. It was stopped and waiting for him at his usual stop.
R.G. Halstead grew up reading old Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines from the late 1950’s and ’60s. The ones with twisty endings.
The story of the week for October 20 to 24 is…
Full Potential by Emily Hall
Red dust clung to his moccasins as the bus groaned east. Behind him, mesas hummed; wind drummed songs through cedar bones. In white hospital halls, he stitched wounds gently, his people’s breath guiding each thread. Pine Ridge pulsed within him, steady, sorrowed, sacred, a heartbeat he would never unlearn.
David A. Lee was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and is a physician and poet whose work bridges medicine and memory. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in In Parentheses, The Shore, and Rattle. He trained at the Mayo Clinic and lives in Texas.