She stood at my door
one black glove, one red
and a lacy half-veil
Good evening, ma’am
icily
I didn’t want what she was selling
but my kids did
Of course, they hadn’t heard
the asking price
the surcharges
the cost-to-benefit ratios
Just the allure
the affect
I’ve been there
This story is based on the prompt “one black glove, one red,” suggested by @big_poppa_G.
Editor’s Note: for clearest interpretation, read affect as a noun, which has been, lately, one of my favourite words.
He just can’t leave, thank God. He loves me too much, knows how much I need him. The vet said he’d be long gone by now. Months ago, in fact. There was no hope. What better way to prove them wrong than to simply thrive, living on love and devotion?
M. Elaine Moore is a North Carolina-based fiction writer and poet. Her work can be found in print in The Island Breeze, and Outer Banks publication, and online at Foliate Oak Literary Journal, Four and Twenty, and The Camel Saloon.
He dreamed of flying.
Every day he stayed home, sequestered himself in his workshop, and pursued his dream.
He considered himself the Noah of the twenty-first century. The global flood was coming, and he would live in the sky.
But he was not this era’s Noah: he was its Daedalus.
As if he were sleeping, wrapped in swaddling clothes, she held him in her arms. He was warm against her chest, like an angel that had fallen from Heaven above and then returned home, leaving his tiny body behind.
Joshua left behind his footprints on her heart.
Shelia Burket is a wife and mother and the author of the upcoming “Sissy Stringbean” children’s stories. She has published one romance, titled “Longing For December,” which is available on Lulu.com and through the Kindle store. Read more of her writing at wvcoffeechick.blogspot.com.
I clutch the pink note in my sweaty hand.
My heart beats furiously.
The room smells like chalk.
“Welcome, Dads!” is written on a big blue banner.
The cruel children laugh at my shoes while I hand over the note.
It reads, “Dear Ms. Wheatley, Elena’s father died last year.”
This story was submitted by Elena Agnello.
Overwhelmed with inexplicable love, she holds her newborn baby to her breast.
She nurtures her child with tender, loving care through the years, through all the joys and challenges.
Even into adulthood, she watches this beautiful life with amazement and wonder, thanking the Creator,
Until this mother’s heart stops beating.
Brenda Thiessen, along with her husband, Harv, lives in Port Colborne, Ontario, where she serves with Operation Mobilization Canada. They have four children – three girls and one boy – and will soon have a son-in-law (and a nephew-in-law: me!).
Her name was Marion: patience of Ms. Nightingale; sternness of a schoolteacher; the humanity of a friend. She delivered our baby at 4:55 AM.
Shift over, she slipped on her leather trousers and jacket, a pair of biker boots, and a bright red helmet. So incongruous: perhaps her own midwife crisis?
Lisa is an English teacher who enjoys writing, sewing and designing jewellery, sometimes all at once!
Your face at the window said it all.
We got here as fast as we could. We stopped for lunch; we stopped too long.
I didn’t know depression could hit you so hard. The road was long, I stopped for a break.
Your face at the window said it all.
Marian lives in Scotland and loves it.
Today we’ve got too many professional law-upholders sittin’ at home, out of a job. Why? ‘Cause they do their work too well! Nobody treats crime like business anymore. It’s a risk versus reward thing.
That’s why I got a government bank account and a brand-new job description: increase the reward.
She explained to me that produce was essential to progress. “Science?” she would say. “Show me science on an empty stomach!”
Farming was her calling. Everything else, she said, didn’t really matter.
A twist of fate brought me, undeserving, through the famine, left alone to carry her message of life.