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.
Hundreds of billions of galaxies. An unfathomable number of stars and planets. Brilliant astrophysicists explore dark matter, quantum gravity, string theory, general relativity, and the infinite nature of spacetime, but they will never grasp the greatest mystery of all: how, amid this endless universe, I am the center of everything.
J. Hess is a writer from North Carolina who does not understand astrophysics and is definitely not the center of the universe.
I did a lot of car crying. Slow and steady. Shaking sobs. A scream here and there. I only pulled over once. That day the pain needed a full stop. Most of the time it was multitask compatible crying, defined as crying while effectively moving toward the intended destination. Surviving.
Mary Lewis loves french fries, her family, and the feeling when the words finally fit together just right.
While she slept, the prince measured her hair, which in sunlight was the color of butterscotch. He admired her view of the forest and fields. He observed peasants passing below. He was not really a prince, but she knew so little about the world, he could have told her anything.
Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
The story of the week for May 11 to 15 is…
Endurance Sport by J.R. Walsh
In the laundromat, Kiki and Jon argued fiercely about the soap—which line in the cap they should use to measure. Kiki gestured about the size of the load. Jon pointed to the size of the washing machine. The detergent smelled like lavender, but the room reeked of dirty laundry.
Laura Levin lives in New York’s Hudson Valley where she teaches writing as an adjunct professor. She has an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
They nestled in the branches of the dying oak out back – dark ink blots staining the bright sky. Only one had perched there at first, but another crow arrived each day to join the growing flock.
Watching them, he envisioned her, smiling grimly.
“Soon,” he thought, “we’ll have a murder.”
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has had many thoughts – dark and light – nest in his head. Writing them down is one way he enables them to take flight.