He asked if it was her card, knowing it wasn’t. He’d fumbled the shuffle, and now his hands were shaking even more than before.
But when he met her eyes, she was smirking. “I liked the little spin move at the end.”
An eternity passed. He found himself smirking back.
Anoop Bhat is an aspiring roboticist and a causal parkour artist. One day he hopes to see a robot doing parkour alongside him.
Should I reach out and take her hand? Will she shake it off? Can I pretend we just touched accidentally? That would be tough. Do I look at her when I take hold or do I pretend like it’s nothing? Tight squeeze or loose?
What if she holds mine back?
Richard Baigent has always wanted to write and has just started.
“When she was little, my daughter and I used to cook dinner every day. Her favorite part was dessert because I would let her help out the most. Anyway, though, I feel like I know you,” she said, looking at me.
Smiling, I said: Tell me more about it, mom.
Ricardo is a 19-year-old student from Puerto Rico. He plans to write and write until he’s mastered it. A task for a lifetime.
My grandfather was odd, shell-shocked. I loved sitting on his knee, sniffing and staring as he managed to chew mints and puff a pipe in the same breath. He never spoke of the “Great War” but I wear a Poppy in honour because it is easier than remembering my son.
Dedicated to education and being a father, E. F. S. Byrne has finally found more time to devote to his writing and is currently working on everything from very short flash stories to full-length novels. Samples and links to over thirty published stories can be read at efsbyrne.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter at @efsbyrne
She’d sit looking at the perennials starting to bud. Spring was in the air, with the promise of warmer days ahead.
She loved new life springing forth from her planting efforts.
Today the backfilling was done quietly, without hope of life being renewed, as we said goodbye at her graveside.
Connell writes a bit.
At the hospital, I find mum. She looks concerned, like I’m not dressed warm enough. I hold her hand, thank her for all she was and kiss her cold frown. On the wall there’s a whiteboard with her name scrawled on it and a section titled Patient’s Needs. It’s blank.
Giles Montgomery writes ads for a living and fiction for joy. Find him on Twitter at @gilesmon.
Disdainful of the traffic, Bob, my golden retriever, bounded across the road towards me. This is very strange, I thought. Bob was killed by a truck two years ago.
As he cavorted and joyfully yelped beside me, I noticed that people had clustered around someone stretched out on the pavement.
John Young is an old chap, 73, a retired Criminal Justice social work manager in Scotland (CJS roughly equivalent to English / US Probation Service) and then University Hon Lecturer lecturing in Social Work ethics. He grapples with themes of limits, longings, and the images that these create.
My mother’s memory of the poems surprised me. I’d sit with her and listen to her recite, after years of never hinting that she knew any poetry. I wonder if she was reminded of the young farm girl she once was, standing in front of her father, practicing until perfect.
Janine lives and writes in Portland, Oregon where she can’t help but be influenced by the leafless trees shrouded in fog. Winter has its beauty.
Fifty years, my love, fifty years ago. We barely knew our outer selves, but joined at inner core.
From stolen moments in the fields, we followed separate paths.
The years grew long my love, with bodies wrinkled and grey. Now space and time have disappeared, sweet love evolved to more.
Eileen is a grandma twelve times over, who, now retired, has switched from writing as part of her employment for others to writing along her own creative path. She has a poem recently published in Mothers of Angels 2.
When the kids were small, presents overwhelmed the space under the tree. The numbers dwindled as, one by one, they grew older and moved away. For another decade, the trees Caitlin and I decorated harboured only a few.
It’s all over now. This year, I didn’t even have a tree.
Alan Kemister is the pen name of a retired scientist experimenting with more fictitious writing. He’s currently working on a climate change novel. Get the gory details at alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com.