The story of the week for March 17 to 21 is…
Strangers by Li Ruan
SEVEN GOEKE: This Is Not What I Meant When I Said “I Want To Go Home”
My mother called me in the night, her profile picture glowing. She announced she was moving us: to a place she once called home. A place I have only ever visited. In my bones I feel how right it is.
My gaze still lingers on the people who cannot follow.
Seven is a writer living in Brooklyn (but not for much longer), who is trying to accept the reality that things never stop ending.
MATTHEW EICHENLAUB: Springtime in Maine
March.
Rutted, half-frozen, mud-soup-ugly
tailspinning tire tracks and grizzled snow
shapeshifting to angry slush clogging
the windshield spray nozzles
on my Tacoma pickup.
April.
Glistening wet branches, swollen green
buds popping, sinful yellow Goldfinches,
black humus, fresh plantings outside
the library, and my stealing a cat-glance
at the landscaper’s helper.
Matthew is fortunate to sometimes live near a lake in Maine where loons swim and sometimes yodel and hoot late at night. And sometimes on a day like this with few clouds in the sky and mountains in the distance a warm breeze will sweep across the lake and take your breath away.
BROOKSIE C FONTAINE: Night Mare
The nightmare visits me just before dawn, like clockwork. A horrid black horse, dripping night from her mane, eyes pale moons.
Finally, I’m tired of fear. I climb onto her cold back.
She carries me into the violet morning. Once fear sheds from her pelt, she shines in the dawn.
Brooksie C. Fontaine is a coffee addict who got into college at fifteen and annoyed everyone there. She is a teaching assistant, illustrator, and MFA recipient. Her work appeared in trampset, Bending Genres, Eunoia Review, Literally Stories, Aureation, Report From Newport, Boston Accent Lit, the Things Improbable anthology, and more.
CHRISTINE PHAN: the very end of a hurricane
When I look back on us, I can still feel the storm coming. Today, the shutters slam, the coffee house shudders, the dishes clatter.
You check your watch, somewhere between indifferent and avoidant. “I should go.”
The rainwater creeps in, pools around our feet. We never talk about your wife.
Christine writes a lot about big feelings and nature. Contrary to popular belief, she is a Pacific Northwest girl, through and through.
PAUL LEWTHWAITE: In the Blink of an Eye
When I saw my doppelgänger across the street, I blinked, but the other me didn’t vanish. Instead, she waved with a sad smile saying ‘goodbye’.
Wait!
I sprinted over the road, hair streaming, oblivious to honking vehicles. A lorry struck me. As my vision faded, so did the other me.
Paul lives in Scotland. Sometimes he writes stories. Sometimes they’re even published.
ELLIS JAMIESON: Apples
Doctors hate them. Historically, one attacked Newton. Snow White actually died! When God himself said ‘steer clear, Kids’, and Adam “forgot”, every man since ended up with one lodged in his throat.
I may be two years old, but I think you’ll find my objection is more than justified, Mother.
Ellis Jamieson is a queer, neurodivergent writer, published in New Writing Scotland, Shoreline of Infinity, Bacopa Literary Review, and more. They’re a Pushcart Prize Nominee, winner of Prose Purple Flash Fiction Award, and were longlisted for the Emerging Writer Award.
THOMAS O’CONNELL: Remember Contact?
They landed in the park-rec soccer complex, all those inviting geometric lines. We threw parties. The school band played the Star Wars theme. We thought they liked us; they said they did. Said they’d return. Now we build cargo cult ships – impotent rockets to entice. We watch the skies.
Thomas O’Connell is a librarian living in Massachusetts.
LI RUAN: Strangers
On a slow local train, off-peak, a man and a woman sat facing each other in an empty car. He wore a blue mask, she a yellow one. Silence pooled between them—soft breaths seeping through paper-thin fabric. Eyes flicked up, away. They remained together, bound solely by assigned seating.
Li Ruan, born and raised in Beijing, China, is a Manhattan-based educational consultant, emerging immigrant poet, and writer. Her work has appeared in Restless Books, Flora Fiction, Assignment Literary Magazine, Persimmon Tree, Storyhouse, Hamilton Stone Review, New York Public Library Zine, Lowestoft Chronicle, Discretionary Love, Cool Beans Lit, and Shot Glass Journal.
ROBB LANUM: How to get Mom through chemo
- Turn off your work phone.
- Keep a wastebasket clean and within reach.
- Pretend you’re hearing her stories from 1965 for the first time.
- Help her look for a tasteful wig online.
- Feed her like she fed you.
- Hold her hand and tell her that none of this is her fault.
Robb Lanum is a failed screenwriter in Los Angeles who fell in love with the short form.