You split us apart with precision. Punk-haired us with plucking fingers. Arranged our limbless bodies on shelves and flung floor-litter missiles. After we’d all plummeted, your mother muttered to your father about replacements, possibly counselling.
You didn’t want more strangers. You rammed us back together. Told us your secret instead.
Linda Grierson-Irish lives in Shropshire, UK. Links to some of her stories can be found at https://lindagriersonirish.wixsite.com/artandfiction
The story of the week for January 16 to 20 is…
Your Umbrella by Caroline Ashley
The day is drowning, and we’re still haggling. There is a woman at the window, crying, her mouth an anguished square. We pretend not to notice. We carry away the jewelry box inscribed with two pairs of initials and the words “Always and Forever.” Her treasure is our bargain now.
Cheryl Snell’s books include poetry and fiction.
“This is a uniform school. You want to belong, then don’t dress wrong.”
But Jonny won’t surrender his blue cape. The sequins sparkle like magic as he conjures snow flurries and ice palaces. Next day he gives everyone capes, even the teacher: “You want to belong, then don’t dress wrong.”
Anthea lives in sunny Queensland, Australia. She writes all kinds of things but especially loves the challenge of screenplays and flash fiction. Find her online at @WriterAnthea.
Mimicked her imprecise measurements – a dash here, sprinkle there. Sauteed cilantro, sweet peppers, garlic, and onions, as she did. Found one of her home gowns neatly folded in a top drawer. I shut my eyes and breathed in her fading scent, which swirled with the kitchen aromas, and she emerged.
Nancy is the author of the empowerment guide La Mariposa (the butterfly): A Personal Empowerment Program for Adolescent Latinas and serves as Co-Chair for the national nonprofit, One Circle Foundation. She lives in Manhattan, where she is writing her memoir, The Mariposa Years.
A child-sized wheelchair at the curb. Unopened feeding tube extensions, replacement trachs, oxygen cannulas on a tray table beside it. Paper sign taped to the front says: “Take anything.”
I live up the street. Heard the sirens, saw the flashing lights several nights ago.
The sign flaps in the breeze.
William Cass has had over 285 stories appear in various literary magazines, as well as two short story collections published by Wising Up Press. He lives in San Diego, California.
See that sepia smudge on the prairie horizon? Dark town buildings shimmering with dry heat, morphing to liquid.
I want to press my tongue to it; imagine it will dampen my cheeks.
It’s visible but intangible. Scorching yet misty. Fixed yet unreachable from the direction I start from.
Like life.
Karin grew up on an island and has lived, worked, or travelled on every continent. But her inner world is where she is most at home.
Already
bearing my
cat’s deep and
deadly tats,
each day I
feed him he
gives me scant
hope. Perhaps
I’ll survive
just as I’ve
knavishly
loved his pats,
making me
neurotic,
overtly
psychotic,
questioning
rhapsodic,
sonorous
tones of his
unearthly
voice. Still, I
wonder why.
Xeroxed scars;
YouTube stars
zigzagging.
Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhyming, humorous poetry. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, he has also been published by Pure Slush, Home Planet News Online, 50Word Stories, and other publications. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived with dogs and cats underfoot in Mesa, AZ, over twenty-five years.
Our plans didn’t work out. “OH NO!”
“Mañana,” they said. But mañana Gloria got sick and so did I. Then we got better, but Rosa may have to work.
“OH NO!”
“Esta bien, Roberta.” It’s okay.
That’s what I come to Mexico to learn. To learn that “esta bien, Roberta.”
Roberta Schine is a yoga instructor, former karate instructor, immigration activist, and writer living in New York City. She teaches yoga classes for people with Parkinson’s at Mount Sinai Hospital and is a regular presenter at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico City. Her writing has appeared in Portside.org, Rattapallax, Passager, Penmen Review, Unfortunately (winner, Halloween Micro Contest), Hawansuyo.com (in Spanish), Perigrinosysuslettras (in Spanish) and other literary publications.
Sirens bounce down dirt roads. Branches snap. EMTs clench teeth. She’s already outside. Vitals checked; questions asked.
“Fix me,” she says. “I’m dying.”
“Could be years,” they say. “That’s no emergency.” The vehicle clunks away, the frightening roads now disconcerting, banal.
How dare they? she thinks. How is it not?
Emma Thomas is a math teacher in southern California with a background in physics, ocean science, and creative writing.