Pushing her daughter on the swing always made her world seem much brighter. She was sent home early today. Her hours were cut again. Where would their next meal come from? A second job was out of the question.
One envelope stood out among the bills in the mailbox.
“Pre-approved.”
Christa Lyon-Moon spends her free time crafting flash fiction that finds meaning in small moments where imagination meets real life.
Dear Forest,
Take me, this day. Be it thorn or splinter, poison leaf or needle, or by way that does not make a sound.
May we dance with broken limbs, bleed with rotting hearts, and burn with contagious crowns of fire.
Let’s be the wind upon our last falling bough.
The story of the week for May 18 to 22 is…
Morning in Rapunzel’s Tower by Bob Thurber
and
The Corner Seat by the Pond by Stephanie Lye
“Two coffees with real milk!” he shouts at the waiter, sliding the coins across the counter. He shuffles to the corner seat, her favourite one with the view of the pond. “Almond milk,” he scoffs, “what nonsense.” He reads the newspaper front to back. Watches the ducks. Drinks both coffees.
Stephanie is a writer from Perth, Western Australia, who likes to write about love, loss and relationships in the hopes it might help her understand them a little better.
I planted a garden on land that rejected me. By summer, it fought back—roots breaking pipes, sunflowers tracking secrets, tomatoes whispering names I’d buried. When I tried to leave, the soil tightened around my ankles. “Stay,” it said. So I did—and grew wild enough to belong.
Toya L. Walker is an educator, gardener, and founder of Organically Grown Queen, where she combines gardening, storytelling, and creative expression to help people reconnect with nature and their own cultural roots. She has presented at conferences including Herbstalk and NOFA, and her work focuses on native plants, urban gardening, and using sensory observation to inspire writing and art. Through her workshops, Toya shows how even the smallest garden space can become a place for imagination, learning, and community connection.
A blind child once shared his golden dream: “I’ll be a doctor.” Surgery waited ten days away. Darkness was his only world then. Ten years passed. Now, I watch him move with grace, speaking to patients, healing their pain. He saw the light, then became the light. Dreams come true.
Arthur is a 14-year-old Brazilian student with a passion for staying active. A true sports enthusiast, he balances his athletic pursuits with his journey as an English learner, bringing the same energy to the classroom as he does to the field.
I take from my wallet a scrap
of notepaper. Folded square,
worn shiny, its creases
disintegrating, a passenger
of decades.
I unfold it as reverentially
as one performing surgery
on a butterfly.
Two initials, a phone
number, a schoolgirl’s
purple handwriting. I refold
the delicate specimen
and tuck it away.
Charlie B. is an emergency room nurse in the Ozarks whose wallet holds far less money than it does memory.
I throw on my finest dress and my dancing shoes. I swallow my nausea in the bathroom. I trudge toward the altar as my audience gawks. I play pretend.
Pretend that I want to be here.
Pretend that I meant to say yes.
Pretend that I never stopped loving you.
lyson Floyd is a writer, rock music devotee, and west coast smoker. You can contact her on Instagram at @monochromefloyd. Knock three times.
Cybernetic limbs are always tough to maintain. My left arm has given me trouble since day one. Buying at a clearance price was stupid. You would think they would make them easier to maintain. Having two of them makes it nearly impossible. I will get it done eventually, fingers crossed.
Marc is a writer, artist, husband, and father of two, living in southern Michigan, where he writes under the canopy of maple trees and dreams of a cybernetic future.
Threads of shame run through our family like veins of gold within a rock
and every so often one of us will crack, then chisel out a piece,
weighing the spoils on the kitchen scales,
then selling it to the highest bidder.
The currency of siblings. Glittering, rare and cold.
Rachel Canwell is an author who, having grown up in the Fens, has lived and worked in Cumbria for over twenty years. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies. Her collection of flash fiction Oh I do like to be was published in 2022 and her novella-in-flash Magpie Moon in 2023. Paper Sisters, her first novel is out now with Northodox.