My mother called me in the night, her profile picture glowing. She announced she was moving us: to a place she once called home. A place I have only ever visited. In my bones I feel how right it is.
My gaze still lingers on the people who cannot follow.
Seven is a writer living in Brooklyn (but not for much longer), who is trying to accept the reality that things never stop ending.
When I look back on us, I can still feel the storm coming. Today, the shutters slam, the coffee house shudders, the dishes clatter.
You check your watch, somewhere between indifferent and avoidant. “I should go.”
The rainwater creeps in, pools around our feet. We never talk about your wife.
Christine writes a lot about big feelings and nature. Contrary to popular belief, she is a Pacific Northwest girl, through and through.
We were quite a pair on that final adventure. Me, seven months pregnant with your grandchild. You, nineteen months pregnant with cancer.
Afterwards, you sauteed our meager bounty in butter and garlic and served all of them to me. And one last time, because you insisted, I cleaned my plate.
Jenny Mattern is a poet, a crafter of stories, and a cake-for-breakfast enthusiast who lives in Montana with her husband and children. She has had poems published in The Poetry Pea Anthology, Cold Moon Journal, The Dirigible Balloon, and The Solitary Daisy. She also writes middle-grade novels and is represented by Nicole Eisenbraun at Ginger Clark Literary Agency.
In the bedroom lay silence, motionless, heavy as the sun, dark as a shadow on the moon.
Bent by space and time, her faint light flickered far away.
“Are you awake?”
Saying nothing, she told me everything, then rolled over and disappeared into the dark matter that was our marriage.
Peter is from Kentucky and now lives in California. For him there’s no difference between the world we see and the one that exists in our heads. His work has appeared in The Potato Soup Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Sandy River Review, CommuterLit, and Flash Boulevard among others. See more at claritywithaview.com.
In today’s sun-baked street, the curl of a desiccated maple leaf taunted me with the illusion of shelter.
Tonight, you lie beside me while rain pours outside.
But even this cosiness is a mirage. I cannot overlook the constant hollowness of your words.
Tomorrow, like the leaf, I’ll be gone.
Tim Dadswell is a retired civil servant who loves writing short fiction, having had a number of stories published over the past ten years. He can be found on X/Twitter: @TimD_writer & Bluesky: @timdadswell.bsky.social
I made the decision to let him die.
No more feeding, no more antibiotics, no more cancer treatments. Just pain meds and sedatives. He was at peace when he died. His anxiety, dread and fear were gone before he took his last breath.
I will never again be at peace.
Sharon Gerger has had to make some tough decisions over the last year. Writing about them helps her to deal with the “too much”.
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.
As his hearing failed, Robert cataloged creatures with exceptional hearing so he could know them—a bat; a barn owl; a fox; any of the cephalopods; the dachshund he had when he was a little boy. At night, he would dream he was one of them, listening to the world.
Jon Berlin enjoys writing fiction. He owns a typewriter.
She would’ve been born in June if I’d done more. I’m just saying she. That feels right to me, her father. This stop light, a street corner, anywhere really, I hold her to me, mentally. For her birthday I send checks to shelters like that’s something. Like gifts.
Michael Gigandet is a retired lawyer in Tennessee. His stories have appeared in Bending Genres, Quarencia Press, Great Weather for Media, Palm Sized Press, Pure Slush and The Hong Kong Literary Journal. His published stories are available at michaelgigandet.com. He administers a music page on Twitter/X at @motobec810.
After Sister’s funeral, neighbors bring tons of food. Mother sleeps, won’t eat nothing, but I’ll clean the kitchen, and play her records. She likes songs by the blind man with the w-o-n-d-e-r word in his name.
“You like that?” I whisper, hoping she’ll open her eyes, see-see-see, I am here.
Angela Carlton’s fiction has been published in Every Writer, Everyday Fiction, Pedestal Magazine, 6S, 50-Word Stories, Spillwords Press and Friday Flash Fiction. In 2022, “A Jigsaw Life,” a collection of stories was released. In 2023, her story “Swallowed,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. See more on Facebook.