She called to ask if it bothered me that she and my ex were dating.
Sounds bad until we note that he and I broke up over thirty years ago.
I said fine, please invite me to your wedding.
Doesn’t the Girl Code include somewhere, anywhere, a statute of limitations?
Mary Hickey writes fiction, poetry, and book reviews, and has occasionally committed journalism. She plays way too much online backgammon as mamabear.
The story of the week for January 3 to 7 is…
Aging Children I Am One by Laura C. Alonso
The Story of the Month is chosen from the Story of the Week winners announced from the past month.
The finalists for December were:
Passage by Brian Maycock
Homecoming by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
Fish Rain by Deborah Tapper
At 84 You Keep Your Glass Half Full by Jennifer L. Freed
The winner of the December 2021 Story of the Month, and the $10 prize, is…
Fish Rain
Deborah’s story is a brilliant blend of humour and poignancy, one of my favourite combinations.
When I was seven, an astrologer told me I would travel.
Had he forewarned I might tumble down a rabbit hole,
or
confront Polyphemus in his sinister cave,
or
hazard the Mississippi aboard a raft with Huck and Jim
then
I’d have [regrettably] opted to barricade myself in my bedroom.
Gary Thomson has adventured in many countries. And distant galaxies.
“No insurance?” he asks.
She thinks he’s loud for a ghost, this doctor dressed top to bottom in white protective gear.
Her dry mouth only allows a nod. A saline bag. A needle. Pinch. The monoclonal antibodies flow into her arm. She imagines she’s taking her grandson to Disneyland instead.
Sarah Samson is a corporate responsibility consultant.
She stared at the comet: a watercolour of greens and violets. The desert air smelled of rain and conifers.
A black swan, disorientated, descended beside her. It is already too late for us, but you still have a chance.
Yet they waited together, sharing the same air, the same fate.
Michael Anthony Fagan is a Scottish fiction writer, filmmaker, and educator. He is a high school English and Media teacher with Masters degrees in both Creative Writing and Screenwriting.
Let me keep my twirling in the grass,
colored chalk and hopscotch–
and my fears.
I held on tight,
whispered at bedtime:
Please don’t let her die.
Grandma’s scent–
the last time that I touched her skin
I cradled her like a child.
She was ninety-three
and I was
age-less.
Laura C. Alonso’s work has been published in In Posse Review, Linnaean Street, 3AM Magazine, SFWP, The Manifest-Station, and other literary journals. She is the former Senior Editor of Fictionline Press and former Fiction Editor of The God Particle, and her fiction has been a finalist in the Santa Fe Writer’s Project’s Literary Awards Program in 2001, 2002, and 2010, as well as a finalist for the Glass Woman Prize in 2012.
A chubby bright-green caterpillar crawls toward me on the city sidewalk. My son once loved catching creatures like it. Now he’s in college and I’m late for work, but I stop to lift the wayward crawler to a patch of foliage. “Be safe,” I say, as if I’ve learned nothing.
DK Snyder’s creative work has appeared in Cool Rock Repository and Dollar Store Magazine. Find her on Twitter at @millioncandles.
Memory is a fickle friend.
You took a piece of my heart and forgot to give it back. That’s how I recall our parting.
You’re famous now. In your tell-all book you spin a different story.
I’m barely worth a mention. Just someone who jilted you a long time ago.
John H. Dromey wrote this story. He thanks Nancy for her prompt.
When we first met
Your wide eyes met mine
And we entwined
Two vines, growing together
Your paws, polar-bear white
Immense, far-north:
Your spirit wandering
You left when deep winter set in
Before spring took her first breath
You left on a sunny day, your spirit drenched in sunshine:
Cloudless.
Katherine Darlington has articles in many publications including poetry anthologies and literary journals. She also has several published novels. This story was written in memory of her Anatolian cross, Zoey. See more of her work at katherinedarlington.com.