I look up into the vast bright sweep of the Milky Way in the moonless sky and think sadly of all the love songs, all the treacly poetry, all the sappy rhymes that are now obsolete.
The stars really are stunning tonight.
Thanks entirely to the astonishing hubris of mankind.
Robert Carlberg writes when he’s not busy not writing.
Thick smoke wakes me in the middle of the night, the house is on fire. I run out, wearing only my robe. It’s five degrees below zero. Twin peril.
There’s an ocean of people outside. Same reality: burning house, murderous frost.
Let’s count us, how many are we?
Eight billion.
John Szamosi is a wordsmith and peace activist who has published over three hundred short stories, satires and poems in print and online magazines.
They found a hook and line on the shore of the lake. Their daughter begged to go fishing, wading in on chunky, shaky toddler legs. They swam wide circles around her, laughing and splashing. Everyone froze when she pulled out the sunfish, shimmering in the sunlight like her golden curls.
Melanie Winklosky is a fiction writer trapped in a grant writer’s body. She lives in Swampscott, Massachusetts with her husband and dog, in what those who don’t understand call her “empty nest,” cheering on her children as they chase their dreams.
Forty plus years in our two-story house
Eighty-three years alive for me
Eighty-six for my husband
Two adult children launched
Ten grandchildren to watch grow
Two past fulfilling careers
Ten o’clock bedtimes
One car to share
Two of us needed to carry groceries home
One new year with multiplying possibilities
Miriam Stein is a social worker, advocacy consultant, and author of Make Your Voice Matter With Lawmakers: No Experience Necessary. Her writings have appeared in local and national publications, including 50wordstories.com. See more at makeyourvoicematter.com.
I shadow the blind man. I’m the reason he’s still alive. I stop traffic for him, nudge him when he’s about to fall down open manholes. For this, I take a cut of his disability and sleep in his house. He’s unaware of my service or the fee I exact.
Sam Hall is a short story writer and poet from a miserable island. When not writing, he’s either fixing leaks in his cabin, building uncomfortable furniture, or chasing after runaway chickens.
Midnight, in the frozen space where the Old Year greets the New.
“This is yours now,” says Old.
Stooping, broken, he can barely lift the world: its wars, famine and suffering.
New takes it, flushed with youthful optimism.
“I will make paradise, just watch.”
Old sighs. “You won’t survive January…”
William Mitchell lives in East Sussex in the South of England. He is an award-winning author, having had early success with various Horror and Science Fiction publications before winning the Writers of the Future contest in 2012. His first novel, CREATIONS, came out in 2014 with John Hunt Publishing.
“Not a star in you, I see,” my father says.
“I worry when I think about you,” he continues.
The outside man may not be the one my father desires. However, the person inside supports the one on the outside, who is on a path leading to a blooming meadow.
Thompson Emate spends his leisure time on creative writing particularly, poetry and prose. He has a deep love for nature and the arts. He is trying his hands on different genres of fiction. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
“It’s just a sprain,” her parents shrugged. “Use Tiger Balm.”
“You’ve walked on a shattered fibula for weeks,” the radiologist says. “You need surgery. Doesn’t it hurt?”
If you want impervious, robotic offspring, she thinks, you beat them, belittle, humiliate, minimize.
Body, mind, heart, soul: shattered.
She smiles. “I’m fine.”
Z.J. Lee is a neurodivergent, nonbinary, chronically ill person of color who lives near the Pacific Ocean and writes by the seat of their pants.
The story of the week for December 23 to 27 is…
Punctuation Sale by John Holmes
Just wasn’t Christmas ‘til Auntie Arlene got up on the roof—tangled in lights, hollering “Silent Night” in sweet, festive irony. Figured herself the neighborhood tree topper, I guess. All December long, we’d hand her trays of goodies through the attic window like some kind of advent calendar in reverse.
See more from Abbie Doll at bsky.app/profile/abbiedollwrites.bsky.social.