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.
She pops back intermittently to check on the bulbs. Sometimes the new resident husband spies her hovering among the garden’s shadows, sometimes the wife. They seem unperturbed by her presence: both smile when the irises bloom. She guesses she’s one of them now, the bulbs—flowering, sometimes, from the dirt.
Linda Kohler lives on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her work has appeared in The Marrow, the Ekphrastic Review, Bracken Magazine, and Meniscus, among others. She can usually be found near water.
He dropped a single seed into the neighbor’s barren patch and walked away. He never saw the sprout or the red petal that eventually bloomed. He didn’t need to. The harvest wasn’t for his eyes; it was for the joy of a stranger. Some seeds are planted for the soul.
Caroline is a writer and creative artist based in Nairobi, Kenya. She enjoys exploring life’s deeper meanings through storytelling, digital art, and traditional crafts.
When I shot the mule deer dead, it fell straight into the snow like it was taking a nap. There was no blood. Something smelled sour. Daddy clapped my back and whistled me a song.
“Dying’s only the beginning for muleys,” he said. “Field dressing’s next. Then cooling. Then supper.”
Oliver Cubillos is a writer and filmmaker from Los Angeles, California. He holds a BFA in Media Arts Production with a minor in literature from Emerson College. His work is published or forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, BULL Magazine, Free Flash Fiction, and elsewhere.
Children were gone; husband might as well have been. But she still had her garden, lilikoi vines, carefully hoarded dried fruits and the 50th State Fair.
She smoothed wrinkled hands over her mother’s gingham apron as softly as if saying a childhood prayer.
This, almost certainly, would be her year.
Erin Gilmore has to imagine the stories her grandparents never told her.
“Fertile imagery, but NO marketable hook.”
She tossed the NO into a jar to compost down with the NAYs and NOTs – aerated with her sighs, moistened with her sweat – until an idea landed, cracked open and extended roots into the loam.
A shoot, a stalk and then a YES bloomed.
Joanna Norland is a playwright and a writing coach who treats rejections as a badge of honour.