That jade tree exploded into life over summer.
Cascading gloss green discs,
no lichen covered stick
torn from an ancient plant, as I closed up my mother’s house.
“Grow again,” I whispered. “There’s sun. Reach…”
She heard me.
The daily joy of more life,
tumbling gently from a concrete pot.
Dave lives in Sydney, Australia and works across various creative disciplines. Connect at @davidnormanbonney.
She knots the pretty scarf around a branch already rippling with countless strips of fabric. The oldest are only rags now, ghosts of forgotten hopes and desires. She whispers her wish against the gnarled trunk before driving away, leaving the murder weapon to flutter and fade like every other dream.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
He must have seen me a mile away, free falling. Now I’m on the ground, lines tangled in the oak above, money scattering like feathers. And a fractured patella.
Yellow talons, big as a fist, coming closer. Eagles are good luck, no?
No.
Stern, cocky countenance, punishing eyes.
Divine judgement.
Steve Saulsbury lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A writer of flash fiction, his work has appeared in many online journals and several printed collections. Most
recently, his piece, “The Field,” was included in the Halloween anthology Flash of the Dead.
He never saw a corpse before. Grandpa lay in the casket, but it didn’t look like him. Was Grandpa still a ‘he’? An ‘it’?
The expression seemed wrong. The real Grandpa would never make that face.
The same nose hairs, though.
“Don’t touch,” an old woman scolded.
But why not?
Ken Zang loves observing the world around him almost as much as living in it. If Ken isn’t learning what makes something, or someone, tick, then he is usually trying to make family, or potential family, laugh.
I’ve always wanted to ride in a luxurious limousine – this one is a black Cadillac. The sun’s rays stream through its oversized windows but fail to warm my frigid body.
The Caddy steers into a gated community where rooftops appear scarcely visible above mounded ground.
My new forever home.
Retired and living the dream in Florida, Pam has had a passion for writing since age 8, and is currently putting together short stories for publication in her first book. When not writing, she reads, knits, runs marathons, cooks (and eats), and plays with her cat.
You worked at dot-to-dots in the hospital while I went to school.
“There are never enough dots,” you raged.
Last night, I looked at the sky and thought: You will never run out again. Then I taped an extra star to my window, just in case you do.
Joanna Norland is a Canadian playwright and writing coach based in East Sussex, UK. She is the author of “Lizzy, Darcy and Jane,” and “Mothers Have Nine Lives,” and writes about the intersection of writing and parenthood on www.mumswrite.com.
Today is the day of the dead. Not the Dia de los Muertos holiday, but the anniversary of the day I died. See the white cross at the curve up ahead? It’s mine. The faded rainbow of plastic flowers? Mine, too.
Wait, there’s something new. A stuffed unicorn! Someone remembered!
Rita Riebel Mitchell writes in the Pinelands of South Jersey. Her work appears in Flash Fiction Magazine, Versification, 101 Words, and others. Read more at RitaRiebelMitchell.com.
The Demolition Pending sign went up only days after the old lady died. The bulldozer was already waiting nearby. That night I snipped the sunset- and dusk-hued hyacinths blooming in her yard. She would have wanted that. I thought they would smell like Spring but they were tainted by death.
Sherri Bale loves using the fewest words possible to tell a good story. So why the heck has she just drafted a novel that stands at 387 pages?
He thinks it sheepish after all, without religion as he is, to plan to store the ashes of his body in an urn, but he knows too well the smiling piecemeal passing of parts on med school anatomy tables. He will not have his hand in theirs—his science notwithstanding.
Lynn Kozlowski’s writing has appeared in such places as 50-Word Stories, The Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Poetry Breakfast, and failbetter.com. He has a volume of short pieces, Historical Markers.
Running my fingers through her auburn locks, I whisper tender words into the stillness. Ever since an accident months ago, she has been immobile and trapped in silence.
I help with her makeup, applying warm colors to restore her former vitality. However, nothing I find will work with her decomposition.
J.A. Allison is a writer and music producer living on the fringe of American society.