“Can you see the baby elephant in the sky?”
“Here’s a wild horse galloping.”
Mum taught me to see stories everywhere.
In the clouds. In the waves of the sea. Chipped paint on the wall.
Wreath in hand, I stand outside church, straining to hear her say, Look up, girl.
Beatrice Rao has just discovered flash fiction and is working on the art and the craft of it.
I wake up.
I don’t know where I am.
My house on Grant?
No, the retirement home.
I wake up.
I don’t know where I am.
Again.
I figure it out.
Again.
And then one day,
I wake up, and I don’t realize that I don’t know
where I am.
Harry Demarest hopes to live long enough to end up in a retirement home.
To discourage temptations to divide and sell,
to encourage harmony and family gatherings, Baba and Papa
left the lakehouse property to just one
of their many children.
Granddaughter Mara called from the lake.
Our beloved grass-barren badminton court
is now a wildflower garden.
Squeals and laughter silenced for a generation.
When he finally started to listen, Matthew’s heart led him to Maine. Now, he lives and writes next to a lake, and sometimes Googles synonyms for the word “regret.”
The smoke alarm goes off seconds before the doorbell, but the oven can wait.
Smoke billows behind you while she beams before you. “I brought wi—oh, wow.”
You sigh at the blackened promise of ‘simple and easy’ romantic dinner, but she leans against you, as natural as breathing. “Pizza?”
Rebecca Ruvinsky is a student and emerging writer in Florida. Found at @writeruvinsky, she has work forthcoming in Underland Arcana and Prospectus. In her free time, she writes daily poems and goes to rocket launches.
Momma hasn’t come home.
I ask Grandma, When? She says, Any day now.
But Momma sent a text I wasn’t supposed to see. Need break. It’s all too much.
The sun cuts the leaves into drops of time. I spin in the driveway, singing:
Any day any day any day.
L.L. Wohlwend’s work has appeared in Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, Modern Haiku, and other places.
Tangy salsa over fried eggs. Buttered toast, sliced in half and glazed with apricot jam. She hasn’t opened a menu in over ten years. Everybody at the corner diner on Hamilton Street knows to call her Suz, and never to ask why certain songs from the jukebox make her cry.
Lisa Marie Lopez has had stories recently published in Blink-Ink and The Ocotillo Review. She loves baseball, turtles, and writing in cozy little cafes. Visit her on Facebook at Author Lisa Marie Lopez.
Seen on the running trail: tall, beefy (beloved you, at the end, emaciated). Black hair under cap (you, at the end, bald). Muscular legs (you, at the end, wheelchair-bound). Blue eyes (you, at the end, blind). Trim beard (you, at the end, blotches). Gentle breathing (you, at the end, gasping).
Over 45 years, Paul Lamar’s poems and stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Steam Ticket, Bryant Literary Review, etc.
When I was a boy, my grandpa threw baseballs to me. Later, I threw baseballs to my granddaughter. I can’t throw baseballs anymore, but she still puts one in my hand when she visits. I like the feel of it. It makes me wish I’d done it for my grandpa.
Ben lives in Dallas where he is viewed with tolerant amusement by his wife and two small boys. He likes writing micro-fiction because people he knows are more likely to read it.
Mom wears a tight smile now.
But give me Mama and fairy tales about overthrowing rich kings.
Mama, an open curtain, waltzing under moonlight after fights with Dad.
Mama, drowning fatherly fusillades with dirty jokes.
Not Mom who draws curtains, slinks through bills and empty rooms.
Mama.
A cracked word.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His story, “Soon,” was nominated for a Pushcart. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, and Ariel Chart, among others.
Sissy’s behind gray walls, the day of competition. Singing occasionally with radios in quiet rooms, I find some courage. As poison takes over her brain, doctors with false hope insert silver needles.
But I sing, dizzy, from worn out bones, my only sister, broken.
Behind velvet curtains, I let go.
Angela Carlton lives outside Atlanta with her husband and two daughters. Her fiction has been published in EWR, Every Day Fiction, Pedestal Magazine, Long Story Short, 6S, High Noon and Friday Flash Fiction among others.