Towel on the sand, she sits in a cross-legged position. She closes her eyes and focuses on the way the wind blows her hair softly across her face. Inhaling slowly, she holds her breath deep inside, musing that this may be the very last time she breathes the ocean breeze.
Samantha Baltz loves to share her stories and loves to hear the stories of others.
On Grandma’s swaying porch, feet planted firmly on the top step, I feel her smile, hear her laugh, see her wrinkled eyes. Screen door swings on rusty hinges and I smell her famous peach cobbler.
“Well, come on,” mother says and I walk in, past the reverend with the urn.
A-Jae is a storytelling wordsmith who writes literary fiction and creative nonfiction, both the truth and otherwise. She is currently working on her first novel and an MFA at SF State. Find out more about her at ajaewoodberry.com.
He loved her all his life. He waited, growing up knowing she was out there, even before he met and married her.
The sun settled behind the hills every day, but today had special meaning. He would be facing tomorrow alone for the first time. Now, she waited for him.
NT Franklin writes cozy mystery short stories, nostalgia short stories, and Flash Fiction and has been published in 50 Word Stories, Page & Spine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Fiction on the Web, Madswirl, Postcard Shorts, 404 Words, 101 Words, Freedom Fiction, Burrst, Entropy, Alsina Publishing, Fifty-word stories, Dime Show Review, and more.
What if I’d held Sophie close
What if I’d whispered:
‘What if something happens to you?’
What if I’d insisted.
If only I’d taken heed of the weather forecast
If only I hadn’t walked into the storm
If only I’d stayed home
If only I’d listened to Mike
What then?
S.B. Borgersen writes, knits socks, and accepts that, at 75, there is still plenty to learn as she studies beginner piano on the shores of Nova Scotia Canada. Sue’s favoured genres are micro fiction and poetry but she does have thirteen draft novellas gathering dust. See more at sueborgersen.com.
Fifty words.
It’s all we have.
Alan took himself from us, so young, when she still had hundreds.
Saturday she couldn’t remember that the bedroom—that dusty shrine—was once his.
Yesterday, his name dropped away.
Soon she’ll gaze at me and see a stranger. We’ll be down to forty-nine.
After chasing his muse from Virginia to Manhattan, Richard Day Gore settled in Southern California, where he spends his time pushing around words, paint brushes, and guitar strings.
The walls inside the grimy bathroom stall are plastered with rumors: pregnant, gay, abortion, slut.
As if words didn’t mean anything. As if they didn’t have power over a person’s life.
My grip around the Sharpie tightens. In an empty corner, I add some truth: You will be missed, Kerry.
Tonia Markou is a writer and university teacher based in Germany. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing. When she isn’t writing flash fiction or short stories or editing her first novel, she collects Converse shoes, stationery, mugs, and pajamas – not necessarily in that order. Her fiction has appeared in Flash, Lit Up, The Junction, and P.S. I Love You.
Way back when, I’d lure the dog up into the indent on the empty side of the bed, where he’d arch his back along the comforter’s fold, sigh, slump, and twitch through sheep meadow dreams. His heart beat through my skin. I’d imagine him gone, you know, in self-preparation, pointlessly.
A Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, J.P. Grasser is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah, where he edits Quarterly West.
At the edge of the woodlands we came upon a group in a field.
We took turns spying with the binoculars. No one said anything.
When it was my turn I saw the casket was unusually small.
There were three women and any of them could have been the mother.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Although labled as weatherproof, Tom’s notebook,
he learned,
was really only water resistant,
much like many watches, whose level
of protection is limited to soda spills,
brief splashes,
and like events.
From memory, he was able to reconstruct
just one of the day’s haiku, the rest being
lost beyond recall.
Phil Huffy stays up late reading Charles Dickens out loud.
She trembles as they’re ordered to evacuate, their home about to conflagrate. Silent, Sam stuffs his car with his clothes, books, and computers. Heartbroken, she packs her vehicle with teapot, blankets, and comforting pillow. Neither of them takes the wedding album, which incinerates, and becomes, like their relationship, a memory.
Sudha Balagopal’s short fiction appears in numerous publications including Wigleaf, Fictive Dream, Cabinet of Heed, Jellyfish Review and New World Writing. She is the author of a novel, A New Dawn. See more at sudhabalagopal.com.