Tag Archives: depression

BILLIE-LEIGH BURNS: There’s No Place Like Home

Artistic, Submissions, ,

Sunrise blinds your tired eyes, you do your nine-to-five, but home time feels different. You overcomplicate your thoughts, hobbies don’t bring joy anymore; you drink until you think you’ll drown, to beat the thief of sleep. There’s no more home to go to when you know there’s no one there.

Billie-Leigh Burns is a writer from Liverpool. Her work has been featured by 50 Word Stories, 101 Words, Funny Pearls and The Mersey Review. She is also a bookkeeper, making her the only writer she knows who owns an ‘I Heart Spreadsheets’ mug.

BROCK MARCHANT: Acting

Artistic, Submissions, Touching, , , ,

I hope Mom understands why I don’t visit more often.

I’m busy pretending to love myself, telling my family I’m okay, playing the role of a happy, young professional and ensuring myself the long, lonely spells are normal; everyone must feel them.

When I see her grave, I break character.

Brock Marchant wrote this story.

YASH SEYEDBAGHERI: Lost Resolve

Artistic, Submissions, , , , ,

The new year knocks.
He can’t get up, sorrow a blanket.
One by one, resolutions slink away. Write more, walk more, smile more.
He promises to get up the next day. The next week.
Sorrow adds another layer.
He tries to dial a number.
But he can’t even say “help.”

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

TACHIBANA KEN: Note from a Castaway

Artistic, Submissions, , , , ,

“Solitary” is an obnoxious euphemism.

Left adrift for far too long; you rush to reel me in only after loneliness manifests as a cry for help. Rejecting an uncertain hand half-extended, my head swirls, stranded in a sea of dissonance. To then soften your sin with semantics? I’d rather drown.

橘ケン (Tachibana Ken) is an aspiring MMA fighter.

KATHERINE DARLINGTON: Retreat

Artistic, Poetry, Submissions, , , , , ,

The sun slides into the horizon
Waves crash the shore
I slip down
Through grainy sand

Let me drown in the sand
It is here that I feel nothingness
Do not throw me a rope or even a prayer
I want to fall into this abyss:
The silence is peace.

Katherine Darlington has articles in many publications including poetry anthologies, and literary journals. She also has several published novels. See more of her work at katherinedarlington.com.

KATI BUMBERA: Gloom

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , ,

Gloom is a thing with feathers, too: it’s perched over my childhood like a pigeon, flapping its dirty wings and doing that dull Sunday coo that means my friends are out of town, the library is closed, and it will be a decade before I’m old enough to move away.

Kati lives in France, writes short fiction and often thinks about cheesecake. Some of her stories are at vocal.media/authors/kati-bumbera.

RAYMOND SLOAN: Tearjerker

Submissions, Touching, , ,

Every night I pick another sad movie that I’ve seen a million times before.

It helps with the loneliness.

Each day I get up and go to work and come home to my cat, Company, who never comes when I call.

It doesn’t count as crying when I watch them.

Raymond Sloan lives in Ireland. He has recently been published in 50-Word Stories, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Ariel Chart, 101 Words, The Drabble, Nanoism, Microfiction Monday Magazine, Blink-Ink and The Dribble Drabble Review.

DANIEL CLARK: Start Over

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , ,

She finished the jigsaw. Broke it up. Knitted a scarf. Unpicked it.

Life goes on and on and on, whether she wants it to or not. She doesn’t. She wants to jump into infinity, close her eyes, close her mind, close the box.

She opens it. Fits two pieces together.

Daniel Clark is a writer who dabbles in many forms and styles. His micro fiction has been published on 101words.org and is forthcoming in Dreams Walking.

DMITRI CHRISTOPHER: Shadows

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , ,

Where is he?

Take a happy memory, old, rarely visited. Imagine it as a painting, oil on canvas.

See the subjects, how they laugh, smile, dance. One does not. Follow that gaze to the dark corners. Someone casts a long shadow, out of view.

There he is. The Shadow Man.

Dmitri lives among the shadows, especially when there are dishes to be washed.

DANIEL ROGERS: Stabilisers

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

It’s Eric’s first time on two wheels. Mary watches him through the kitchen window as he pedals faster and faster, becoming a blur.

The walls start to close in again and she reaches into a drawer for her little bottle of pills. One day, she hopes, she won’t need them.

Daniel has always loved the stabilising influence of words.