Crack. Sizzle. Pan-fried good mornings float into the bedroom. An aroma that smells a lot like productivity – and expectations. Runny yolks drip promises of anticipation onto bread smeared soft by buttery platitudes. “You’ll do great!” “They’ll love you!” It sticks going down. She says “Good morning.” I hear “The end.”
Claire is a fiction writer based out of several coffee shops around the globe.
Our apartment was full of books and vanilla candles with wooden wicks that burned deep into the evening. He made me coffee dashed with Baileys and we dreamed of having children. If we have a son, I said, we’ll go to the sea. If we have a daughter, the mountains.
Elanur Williams is an Adult Basic Education Teacher at an adult learning center in the Bronx. Previously, she taught at an elementary school. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and writing poetry. She met her husband in Dublin, Ireland, while completing her M.Phil. in Children’s Literature at Trinity College Dublin. They live in New York with their daughter.
I give you my water shoes. You wade out first into the cool, murky water. Mosquitos lick the surface, buzz between us. Bits of rock jab into the bottoms of my feet. I leap to you and you hold me fireman-style. Purple haze settles in the sky. Mountains bow down.
KB Wright is a teacher and writer. She enjoys traveling to new places in real life and in fiction. She can usually be found crocheting and listening to a good audiobook.
I’d hoped you would never forget me.
I danced between dreams and wishes,
Illusions and fears,
Hoping to catch a reflection of you
In my soul’s mirror.
But you have passed on,
Into the in-between spaces
And left me here,
Beyond remorse, beyond repair.
I’ll never forget you.
Forgive me.
Since she could talk, Cate Covert has been regaling friends and family with her tall tales. She loves engaging with her reading audiences. Her poetry, flash fiction, and humorous stories reside at Cate Covert on Chadashah.org, and her Inspirational essays at Pastora Cate’s Corner on Substack.
He manages to sleep through the ruckus and wake up on time. In the morning, he retreats to his safe place: his friends, a hot breakfast, and his books are there, waiting for him.
His parents have that same argument over and over, every night. It is their safe place.
Cecile lives in Northern California where she enjoys writing to the sound of the gentle rain.
Julie Harrington’s mother made her into a living doll, blue eyes open, staring into space, hungry for invisible food, she never wet her diaper or cried: such a good baby, talking only when her string was pulled: I love you, let’s play, may I have a cookie, you hurt me.
Catherine Harnett is a poet and fiction author from Northern Virginia who has published three books of poetry and a number of short stories which appear in national and international magazines and anthologies. See more at catherineharnett.com.
Sometimes you cry in the kitchen; sometimes I do. Our teeth grew sharp and our legs tails; we didn’t have a choice as the saltwater rose. But together we can dance in the waves that almost reach the ceiling. Two of a kind. Bound together by something stronger than blood.
Calla Smith lives and writes in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She enjoys continuing to discover all the forgotten corners of the city she has come to call home. She has published a collection of flash fiction “What Doesn’t Kill You”, and her work can also be found in several literary journals.
October: crimson, burnt-orange and gamboge, a poisonous yellow powder once used in paint.
We are living above a paint store in Chicago, she wrote, come visit! Oh, how I wanted to.
Sometimes, in my writing group, I write about a paint store. They think I’m writing about a paint store.
Matthew is fortunate to sometimes live near a lake in Maine where loons swim and sometimes yodel and hoot late at night. And sometimes on a day like this with few clouds in the sky and mountains in the distance a warm breeze will sweep across the lake and take your breath away.
I hunch over computer screens.
My wife tries to get me outside.
I have to complete these editing jobs. We have heating, cell phone bills, electricity, and groceries to cover.
She tells me I’m remote.
I shut down the computer. Take her hand. We walk into the night, clouds parting.
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 Pushcart Prizes. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Ariel Chart, among others. He has been working on a short story collection centered around two siblings and their quest for the American Dream. Yash lives in Garden Valley, Idaho.
Weeknights Jack had emptied his pockets into a cracked blue bowl on their bureau. Fridays they’d count the money and splurge: chips, beer, a pay-for-view. They’d wrangled over crumpled dollar bills, over what to choose. Wrangled, Jack thought, over everything. He missed their wrangling. Missed counting. He hated the change.
Miriam N. Kotzin writes fiction and poetry. She is the author of five collections of poetry, two collections of short fiction, and two novels—most recently the novel Right This Way (Spuyten Duyvil). Her 50-word stories have been published in 50-Word Stories, 50 Give or Take, and Blink Ink. She teaches literature and creative writing at Drexel University.