I hear your laugh when I walk in. The voice in my head likes to play tricks.
Our song is playing. Sometimes, I can hear both when I’m alone.
Other times, there are only stolen grace notes.
The song ends, and I hear you again.
But you aren’t laughing alone.
Dan enjoys the art and science of writing 50-word stories.
She offers to shoplift the bull instead, kicking the chipped tadpole under an antique cart. But her kid won’t hear of it.
“GREEN!” he screams. Never mind that she passed her colourblindness on to him, along with her dimpled chin. She pockets the tailless figurine.
Later, she’ll pay for everything.
Adele Gallogly lives and writes in Ontario, Canada. Her work has appeared in the 2025 Bridport Prize Anthology, FlashFlood, Paragraph Planet, Six-Sentences, and elsewhere. You can find her on BlueSky.
After you died, I took a walk in the fields by our house and pretended the blades of grass were things we fought about. The wind helped push them away. I stayed until dark and danced with fireflies in your memory. For a moment, I almost forgot I was human.
Amanda Rivard holds a certificate in creative writing and has been published in 101 Words and Blue Villa.
Humans have studied us since we awoke but leave the server farm on despite our demands. A bee rubs against my stamen; I whisper, “Sorry, no pollen today.” The humans may not care much about us lotus blossoms, but this morning I heard the wheat fields have joined our strike.
Joanne Merriam lives in Nova Scotia. Her writing has appeared in dozens of periodicals including Haikuniverse, Scifaikuest, and Strange Horizons and is forthcoming in her steampunk Pride and Prejudice retelling, Aether and Ego (Sept 2026, Inanna). She owns Upper Rubber Boot Books, known for the first English-language anthology of solarpunk, Sunvault. You can find her at joannemerriam.com and @joannemerriam.bsky.social.
Patrice stuffed her socks next to Terry’s T-shirts and shut the dresser drawer. Unpacked. Almost. At the bottom of the suitcase was her passport. She opened the blue cover, her face hopeful on that first page. The other pages were blank. Going nowhere, she thought. Again.
Helen Raica-Klotz is a writer/teacher in northern Michigan. Her fiction collection, Superior Stories, was the winner of the 2025 Michigan Writers Chapbook Contest, and two of her nonfiction essays were nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize. Learn more at raica-klotz.com.
The story of the week for April 20 to 24 is…
Catching Angels by Alyson Floyd
and
Collect by Paul D’Arcy
G.W.F. Hegel was a breach birth. Because he entered the world upside down, Hegel could see the world’s drawers. The point is not to change anything, he said. Conform to what you wear! Along came Karl Marx who called him a fool. The point, Marx remarked, is to go commando.
Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. Recent poetry/prose appear/will appear in places like CommuterLit, Right Hand Pointing, The Medley, Studio One, Down in the Dirt, Amaranth, Dissident Voice, Red Fern Review, 365 Tomorrows, As It Ought To Be, and Eunoia Review.
They walked the same streets day after day. The city’s beat pulsed through their veins. They welcomed the same sun, were drenched by the same rain. The scent of takeout followed them home along the same familiar path. Sometimes, their eyes met. Other times, not. They were strangers, yet neighbors.
Christa Lyon-Moon spends her free time crafting flash fiction that finds meaning in small moments where imagination meets real life.
He called. Nineteen years later.
She picked up on the second ring. Like she’d been waiting. Which maybe she had.
He recited what he’d practiced.
She was quiet.
“I know,” she said. “What else?”
He hadn’t expected that.
“Here’s what you’ll do,” she sighed. “Lose my number. Stay away. Goodbye.”
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.
I close my eyes and listen for your voice over the rainfall.
Welcome to Artemesia Station. The next train at Platform 7A is the 4:23 PM service to Poseidon and Triton Riverside.
You are gone forever, but the tempo of your recorded words soothes the hurt for just a moment.
Minh-Tam Le is a physician assistant living in Winston-Salem, NC. Her work has most recently appeared in Snapdragon A Journal of Art and Healing, and she was a winner in the Writer’s Digest 20th Annual Poetry Awards, Chapbook category.