My eyes are fixated on grandpa’s parched lips. He attempts to utter a word, but there is only silence.
It is just he and I at home. I am 17.
The window shuts violently,
And grandpa goes.
The last thing was a glimpse of excellence in his eyes, and silence.
Ellie Nik is a teacher/researcher who lives in Sydney, Australia. She writes as a way of self-discovery.
He watches neighbors waddle out of the market, carrying Coors, steaks, and veggies. It beats his fridge with one onion. A half-empty case of sardines. He imagines the next paycheck, the sweetness of an orange. The crunch of a carrot. Even the coolness of beer. But good things go fast.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
I lean across the driver’s seat to drag and twist myself in. A flapping fish? A human corkscrew?
The wind is strong. Please, door, stay open.
One must keep doing things, seeing people.
A man says, “Is this your hat?”
One less thing to manage.
“No.” Remember manners. “Thank you.”
Elizabeth Leyland writes short and long fiction and lives in the UK. She has been published by Fairfield Scribes and CafeLit.
I was 74 all of last year
but I thought I was 75.
As my birthday grew near
I did the math again.
OMG
I’m only 74; I missed
a whole year! We spent
no time together, no sunsets.
Already I miss her, the one
I never knew. The one
who got away.
Matthew Eichenlaub’s story is a wake-up call to himself: live in the present quit thinking of a future drawing to a close or a past broken drowning in sludge.
The walkers are thrilled. “Oh look, a heron amongst those nodding bulrushes! Get a photo.”
The proud garden owner is furious. Her koi have disappeared from the immaculate little pond. Herons are such vermin.
The heron flaps lazily from feast to feast, caring for her young and simply staying alive.
Rosie Douglas has been writing all her life, just for fun. She was born in the East End of London, England and although she says she hates London, she keeps getting drawn back there time after time
Why
do people
return as ghosts?
Spirits
have assured me
we’ll get a final chance
to make up for the lost time…
to read all the novels
we never opened,
or listen to the symphonies
we most adored,
and visit the backrooms
of art museums
in search of hidden beauty.
Roberta Beach Jacobson is drawn to the magic of words–poetry, puzzles, song lyrics, flash fiction, stand-up comedy. She is the editor of Cold Moon Journal.
You were worried about mosquitos so I ditched the water collection bucket. Without downspouts or a rain chain, the waterfall drilled into the concrete keeping us awake. The bucket hadn’t been much quieter. We didn’t sleep much usually, but not for any good reasons. I worried about mosquitos finding love.
JR Walsh’s works are at itsjrwalsh.com.
In a college speech class, the professor merely said, “Your topic is ‘moving.'” Frozen, I only spoke about going from class to class.
Now, I would have said I scrubbed the floor when we broke up, put my furniture in storage, took one last look. And left.
Paul Levine’s writing has appeared in The Kansas Quarterly, Permafrost, The Berkeley Fiction Review, and The New York Times, among others. His recent memoir, The Venice Literary Review, is available on Amazon and other outlets. He lives in Venice, Florida.
The next morning, she finds yesterday’s coffee
still in its carafe beside the sink.
Suddenly she is folding
herself onto the kitchen floor,
holding herself in her own arms.
She is here, breathing in, breathing out.
Alone. In their kitchen. With the coffee
he made.
The last thing
he made.
Jennifer L. Freed likes writing very short stories, which often tell themselves with line-breaks. She is the author of When Light Shifts (Kelsay books, 2022), a memoir-in-poems about the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage. Please visit jfreed.weebly.com.
She cast enchantments throughout the house: the closets to appear larger than reality, the refrigerator to always smell like a favorite food, the living room to be the perfect temperature for whoever stood within. But it wasn’t until she enchanted the mirrors that someone made an offer on her house.
A one-time teen mother and high school dropout, Larina Warnock is an educator with a doctorate degree in rural Oregon.