Above, an azure layer so thin you can see the blackness of space behind. My eyes slide west across layers of green and yellow to a fire beyond the horizon, so deeply red that I could take comfort in its apparent warmth if the evening air wasn’t so bitingly cold.
Apricity is a favorite word of Stephen’s, especially during this time of year, meaning ‘warmth of the sun in winter.’
You live with white walls, an oak desk. Collections of Yates. Richard Ford.
This year, there’s no dirty jokes. No spaghetti sauce bubbling with tomato-colored cheer.
No hugs, lavender perfume, butter-colored lights blanketing you.
Just Zoom, accentuating shadows. You can’t feel polished stairways. Savor angles and doorways.
The lights dim.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. Yash’s work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and Ariel Chart, among others. He lives in Garden Valley, Idaho.
February 9th, her birthday: deep in Winter’s bitter swell. Sledging with friends, then home to Mum’s hot chocolate and hugs.
Now grandchildren tiptoe to her door with homemade cake, footsteps wary over unforgiving frost. She pulls them indoors, warms small hands in hers.
Over seventy birthdays, she’s never felt cold.
Jo Withers writes short fiction from her home in South Australia where February is anything but cold.
Fields of vivid yellow; enthusiastic sunflowers tell me stories of love, life, and laughter as I lay amongst them.
Imposing, tall, stretching, kissing the sun.
I rearrange them in their vases. Together we look out the kitchen window, sighing.
They’re wilting now, but I count the days ’til next year.
Michael is currently writing bios for up-and-coming artists in the U.K.