The window is giving me nice morning sunlight. I’m trying to enjoy some solitude and tranquility, while you bustle about, oblivious. The chilled room was quite awful enough, but the water and warmer nights will not force me into anything. I will bloom when the mood strikes, and not before.
After decades of nattering on about moving abroad, Ed Walker finally retired and bought a house in Catalunya, Spain. His work can be found in 50-Word Stories, The Arcanist, Blink-Ink and elsewhere.
How long does it take to get to know someone? There are some people that you know the moment you meet them. Others surprise you years later.
Who are you?
Who am I?
I am the little voice inside your head.
You don’t know me as well as you think.
Bradan’s lifelong passion is writing. He is twenty-one years old and recently married to his wife, Addison Blanck. He is attending Colorado Mesa University and plans to graduate in the spring of 2027 with an accounting degree.
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.