His once dear ex-wife has died at 59, 30 years after their sad divorce. No words, sightings, or news between them for half his life. Cause of death unreported. It’s as if he’s lost a slumbering phantom limb—with all real feeling gone and now none even to be imagined.
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.
My mother keeps secretly replacing my little sister’s dead goldfish.
My newly adopted sister keeps randomly telling strangers at the store, “My mommy died!” and “I’m going to the beach!” My mother–our mother–nods, tired.
Two things can be true: There is a dead goldfish. There is a replacement.
Rachel Hapanowicz is currently a teacher in Cincinnati public schools where she is an expert at making cool lingo very uncool to her students, being from Ohio, and finding the best karaoke spots in town.
Would life have been easier if you had died? You left. My heart struggled, fearful and uncertain. Sadness watered my heart, transforming tears into caterpillars. You found purpose with a new love. I stretched and lifted skyward, chasing butterflies, searching new joy.
Then you died, and no, it wasn’t easier.
Eileen is forever chasing butterflies metaphorically as a source of hope and inspiration.
My Dad lost his Bible, a photo of his late wife lovingly tucked inside. It was like losing her again. Eventually his mind eased, but never his heart.
Then a surprising call came. His Bible was found!
Heaven claimed Dad before I could tell him. Somehow, I think he knows.
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who cherishes the returned Bible as much as her Dad would have.
She shreds the cloak of past trauma. She defies present challenges.
Then, she stops fighting. She treasures her newfound peace.
A trace of sadness lingers somewhere within; the remnant is part of her now. If she lets that go, she’d be incomplete. She wouldn’t know how to grieve for herself.
Shanti Chandrasekhar writes and lives in Maryland. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Braided Way, Literary Mama, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Belly pressed against the warm sand.
Through half closed eyes, the golden hairs on my forearm bend like grass in the breeze.
The foamy ocean edge reaches up,
falls back,
tugging the sun burned memory of you out to sea.
We all swam here that day we got the call.
Dave lives in Sydney, Australia and works across various creative disciplines. Follow at instagram.com/davidnormanbonney
I hadn’t known before that flowers could get fungus, but you made sure to teach me when you left that vase I gave you in the same corner for weeks. Back there, I was able to learn. Among spores, I realized that it wasn’t just the daisy that had died.
Cezar Lima is a Brazilian Electrical Engineering student at the University of São Paulo. He’s been into creating and developing ideas since he was young, always curious about how big the world can be.
He moved the couch.
Moved it again.
It felt right where it was before she bought the end table she didn’t take with her but the end table didn’t feel right anywhere else so he couldn’t move the couch back.
An inch to the left. Two inches forward.
Almost there.
Currently residing in the Rust Belt, Erika Noel Johnson enjoys tea, horror movies, and bad art. She’s figuring things out.
Two teenagers in a cemetery. They prop their laptop against a tombstone. A faint name scrawled there—Alastair or Archibald, died age 15. Wispy fingers pat the girl’s hair, shake the boy’s hand, offer them a spray of white meadowsweet. No one screams. The three new friends share ghost stories.
Beth Sherman’s writing has appeared in over 100 literary journals and will be in The Best Microfictions 2024. She’s a Pushcart, BSF, and BOTN nominee.
We measure it by increments—the infinite wheel of the cosmos—eons and ages. The languid traverse of shadow on a sundial. Days spool into memory—weeks into months, months into years. We had all the time in the world… until the blink of an eye and you were gone.
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, his writing has appeared in dozens of reviews, journals and anthologies. His first novel, “Deadline,” was published in September. He lives outside Chicago.