I’m Vanilla, lingering on sticky fingers, comfortably familiar.
She’s Viennetta, exotic mint choc chip flavour, craved daily, saved for special occasions.
I envy the amnesiac, forgetting significant events, how such treats taste celebrating another birthday. Who remembers death dates and correct funeral cake etiquette?
Left to melt; another Sundae service.
Steven Holding lives in the United Kingdom, where he writes because he has to. You can follow his work at www.stevenholding.co.uk.
Hazel’s brother laughed because she could never find the circus elephants. Or even the Big Dipper. But when they camped in the treehouse, Hazel startled awake, her eyes full moons. A firecracker sky of iridescent stars floated between the branches. Reaching up, she swung, flickering into a violet shooting star.
Nin Timbers adores tiny stories, whimsy and big laughs. Her stories can be found in 100 Word Story, Paragraph Planet and forthcoming in 101 Words.
The story of the week for August 24 to 28 is…
Abyss by Alyson Floyd
and
Teaching the youngest how to drive by Robb Lanum
I spit toothpaste in the sink and dial a digit at a time. Numbers tied to pigtails and “can I come to stay?” Those not used enough while crossing college lawns. When adulthood came, the ones I called each morning. Ten-digits etched on my heart ring a final time today.
Jozzie Stuchell Velesig is a Harvard-trained writer and founding member of the Story Street Writers. For more information, visit jozziewrites.com or storystreetwriters.com.
He has no business draping me in his reassurance. He doesn’t have the facts. Can’t see, as I can, the endless ways life can unravel. Still, I luxuriate in his careless smile, his shrugging faith in a benevolent future. The confidence doesn’t fit, but my god he wears it well.
Zoë is an American writer living in London. She publishes fiction about her adopted city every Friday on her Substack.
Much tiresome work amounted to his death, but insurmountable resilience plagued his life. Sobriety, marriage, fatherhood, entrepreneurship. Un-hating his father, un-resenting his step-mom, recanting needles, renouncing the man he was. Cancer ate away at him, but he couldn’t die alone—not my brother. We sing for you, Prince of Toledo.
Charlotte Keller is a writer from northwest Ohio. She is an MFA student at Western Michigan University and a poetry co-editor for WMU’s literary magazine, Third Coast. She has been published in The Periwinkle Pelican, Planet Venus, and ReCap Literary Magazine.
Last night I walked into the sea, not planning to return. Suspended deep in endless black, a stranger’s ashes whispered to me.
“You’re too early,” they said, shimmering in the warped moonlight. “Go home.”
I washed up onshore at sunrise, still breathing in spite of myself. And I walked on.
Alyson Floyd wrote this. Author’s note: for Beck.
Strolling through hardbacks and softcovers. Exploring chapters, encountering soliloquies, negotiating allegories and metaphors. Words became her banquet: she drank descriptions and ate alliteration, consuming multiple volumes in a single sitting.
When they found the library empty, nobody thought of seeking her within those well-thumbed pages.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Rag-gray sky, seeming
less aftermath than omen
with no horizon.
Willow stooping low,
storm-sodden. Stubborn drops cling
like unspoken thoughts.
Wild wheat seaweed-slick,
aligned like iron filings,
briskly brushed tresses.
The rain-steeped rampant
surcharged Earth, chastened magnet
scooping us along.
Ancient Cloud-Beard, hold
your ire, establish stillness
sudden as thunder.
Charlie B. is an emergency room nurse in the Ozarks, where sometimes in late spring the only silence is the “silence amid storms.”
Changing lanes (maintain your speed) past the Costco where we’d buy the diapers. Tricky exit (use your blinker) approaching his kindergarten. I look to make sure he’s checking his mirrors and see a stubbled teenager.
I count the years that disappeared. He counts the days until he can drive away.
Robb Lanum is a failed screenwriter in Los Angeles who fell in love with the short form.