JENNIFER L FREED: To a Tourist in the Grand Canyon

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You were used to the certainty of your body, of your daily ten-mile run. You never doubted you could hike ten miles in a day. That morning, the canyon walls rippled with bands of sunlit color. You’d never known such heat. You’d never have believed it could stop your heart.

Jennifer L Freed is author of When Light Shifts, a memoir-in-poems about the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage. This story was inspired by her recent visit to the Grand Canyon and a news item about the number of deaths there this year. Please visit jfreed.weebly.com to learn more.

MARLA KRAUSS: Hope Lurches

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People aren’t keen on zombies, even though they try so hard to fit in. The suburbs can be like that sometimes. The zombies grunt a greeting as they shamble into doggie day care, Starbucks, the yoga studio. They love yoga. They lurch in for Shavasana and come out with hope.

Marla Krauss is a writer who lives in Massachusetts.

ALEXA DONLEY: Following

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Summoning a ghost isn’t so hard. If your lips touch the teacup rim at dawn, you taste rose instead of chamomile. If you wear a diamond ring with initials you don’t know, you feel a hand in yours.

Sometimes you can hear them too, but don’t follow too far.

Alexa Donley is a speculative fiction writer from Federal Way, Washington. When not writing, she enjoys traveling and walking in storms.

AZARIN SADEGH: Mom

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They called me today to say she has lost six pounds since last week. Mom has been refusing to eat for a while now. I visited her on Sunday. She looked radiant in her blue sweater, and long pearl necklace, wrapped in a wool blanket. Outside, it was 102 degrees.

Azarin Sadegh is an Iranian-American writer. Her work has appeared in Place Art Magazine, Scoundrel Time, LA Review of Books, and various anthologies.

BOB THURBER: Marooned Notebook Entry

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This evening, on the western horizon, a low bank of clouds resembled a fleet of ships moving past.
We sat in the sand and watched until the shadows swallowed everything.
We haven’t seen an actual ship since we dragged ourselves ashore.
I say “we” to forget I am absolutely alone.

Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.

CAROL TYMANN: After Life

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Mom so wanted to wear that dress to her granddaughter’s wedding. At least she’s getting to show it off to her loved ones waiting to caress her hand or whisper goodnight.

Look, she’s dreaming of dad, hoping he’ll still see his “lovely girl” when they meet soon, after years apart.

Carol Tymann is still banging computer keys searching out meaningful words, sentences, messages.

BRENDA LEE CARLSON: The Lonely Man

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The lonely man washed his dishes in the sink and placed them in the strainer, stopping to reminisce over a chipped red mug. His heart skipped a beat: Her job had been to dry, close to him, warm and laughing. Instead, he dried the memory out of the cup alone.

Brenda Lee Carlson is a writer from Minnesota. She has an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing.

SUZI HARRIS: Color My World

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Color vanished from the world with his wife’s last breath. Murmured words of sympathy hovered at the edge of sound. Endless gray corridors led to the NICU. Masked and gowned, he stood beside the incubator, dark spines of hair visible among the tubes and wires. In that moment, color returned.

Suzi lives somewhere between truth and interpretation and writes whenever the words must come out and speak to others.

MELANIE WINKLOSKY: Photographs

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Her children, somehow adults, took hundreds of vacation photos, posting daily. Curating an online life didn’t appeal to her.

Instead, she walked behind them, always, watching their hair, hearing their laughter, tucking the moment safely into her memory, where she could return and return when they left again in September.

Melanie Winklosky is a fiction writer trapped in a grant writer’s body. Her work can be found in McSweeney’s, and was named a finalist in the 2023 Boston in 100 Words contest and a 2023 finalist in NYC Midnight’s Flash Fiction Challenge. She lives in Swampscott, Massachusetts.