It’s not empty out there. This nowhere road is cluttered with bones. A toppled pile for every star burning in the black sky.
Shed your skin during the long walk of dying. Thoughts will churn into flashing colors.
Drop your bones in a clatter and float alone toward those stars.
JR Walsh is the Online Editor at The Citron Review. He teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego. Find his writing on itsjrwalsh.com.
And he lived happily ’til the end of his days, enjoying life’s simple pleasures, never knowing that in granting his wish for happiness, the genie did not give him his heart’s desire but rather erased it, so the man would never suffer a day in the yearning for his dream.
Whitney is still working on her heart’s desire–to be a published novelist. In the meantime, writing, on most days, makes her quite happy.
In my dreams, I could fly. A little boy, ignoring the science of gravity.
Somewhere along the way, those dreams disappear.
“Another beer?” My wife scolds.
“Hard day at work,” I reply.
She huffs and goes to bed without me, as usual. I drink more beer.
She doesn’t understand flying.
Del Griffith is a retired math teacher who reads and writes extensively and travels the state, looking for great barbecue and swapping tall tales with all the old men.
I looked forward to being Uncle Joe. I would buy my nephew a dog and teach him how to bluff at poker. I’d read “The Lorax” to my niece and introduce her to jazz. Then my big brother became a priest. To devote himself to God? Or to deprive me?
Ann S. Epstein writes novels, stories, memoir, poems, and essays. Her novels are On the Shore, Tazia and Gemma, A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., The Great Stork Derby, One Person’s Loss, and The Sister Knot (in press). Her other work appears in North American Review, Sewanee Review, PRISM International, Ascent, The Long Story, and elsewhere. She also has a PhD in developmental psychology, MFA in fiber art, and certification as an end-of-life doula. Her website is asewovenwords.com.
There are things they don’t tell you about living on this coast.
How the fog can roll in at any time, day or night. How the wind carries in long-dead souls who cling to your skin like mist. How the different life you wanted becomes the last life you lead.
A one-time teen mother and high school dropout, Larina Warnock holds a doctorate and is an educator on the Oregon coast. She lives with her husband, three dogs, and a turtle.
The market is busy
Lovers, arm in arm
Shop together
But She
Flirts with the flowers
Spilling over the corner aisle
Like her tears
She finds a delicate bouquet
With daisies and one rose
She’ll put them on her kitchen table
And pretend they’re from
Her Lover
(Who never
Was)
Katherine Darlington has articles in many publications including poetry anthologies, along with several published novels. When she isn’t riding horses or hiking on some mountain trail, she’s working on a story. See more of her work at katherinedarlington.com.
I had been away too long.
Back to the comforts of home. Familiar places, friendly faces, birds singing into the air that once sent my dreams aloft. Some long forgotten, others I could never let go.
Home is forgiving, though, patiently waiting its turn to claim “I knew her when.”
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who wishes all of you a happy holiday season.