On a warm summer day,
I lay down under an apple tree.
Slowly dozing away,
I remembered the good old days
and wished to be younger again
to experience the joy,
I once had.
Suddenly, I realized:
One day, I will remember today
and will wish to relive it again.
Stella Fernandez loves reading and writing.
From the narrow galley behind a testy espresso machine, the beautiful seeker kid navigates coworkers, regulars, the tip game, and a sprained left ankle. Nose manual nollie shuv out. A fluke. Time heals, youth conceals, and this one’s already gaining the precipice, getting a decent jump on the unknowable gap.
Evan Harris is the author of The Quit.
My skin is late summer:
all golden sunsets
stained with raspberry,
stretched over pale tendrils of green.
My eyes are early autumn:
storm grey from a distance,
golden-green-blue up close.
And my hair is the last colors
before winter,
brown glimmering with fierce but faded
red and ochre and chime.
Maria is enormously fond of all the seasons. She’s enchanted by scurrying cloudscapes, and wildflowers that thrive in improbable places.
He leaves you both behind with the unanswered question of why. For some incommunicable reason, you conclude that your primary purpose now is to solve it. You pore over the plotted points of your shared timeline, charcoal pupils darting between them: frantic, determined, and leaving behind a spider’s laboured trail.
Laura works as a secondary school pastoral assistant and relishes sharing the therapeutic potential of the arts with young people. She writes to navigate life’s more painful moments and, although she has attended a writers’ group for over a year, has yet to find the courage to share her own work.
Married too soon, she lost herself. She became we; we became they. Over the years, there was no room for her.
Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. Grandmother.
Walking the line between solitude and loneliness, she hopes to come to terms with which was preferable. Waiting for answers, she begins to write.
Ruth Mannino is a retired math teacher, tutor, and business analyst, who has always loved to write. Meditation and mindfulness being a part of her everyday life, in 2020, she published Thursday Mornings: Breathe, Stretch, Listen, Love, a series of interviews she conducted with senior members of her chair yoga class. She has just discovered flash fiction and finds it motivating.
To the beat of pre-dawn drums, we girls pretty ourselves, then form a circle, united yet apart.
The order in which the boys may choose is long-decided. They assess, appraise, make their final decisions.
Drums stop, silence echoes.
The first boy steps forward, chooses me.
My family will be happy.
Laura Besley writes short fiction and squeezes her writing into the bookends of her day. She has lived in Holland, Germany, and Hong Kong, but now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. Her flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers, was published in March 2020. She tweets at @laurabesley.
The story of the week for June 14 to 18 is…
Father’s Day Again by Bob Thurber
I still can’t get through a week without thinking about her.
Some deep-rooted memory sparks, my heart ignites, my thoughts wander.
She feels close. Alive again. If not in this house, this town, then the next.
In my heart no time has lapsed since I last saw my daughter’s smile.
Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
My sons. Fathers. Labour and birth. Nocturnal baby cries. Partners’ children, now your own. Teacher conferences, school field trips, patient games of chess. Working hard. Paying (hard). Concerts, dance recitals, sports, and more. Escorting brides, assisting grooms. Long days in hospital rooms. Tears shed. Laughter shared. Love, not biology, defines.
Eileen is a mother to four loving and supportive fathers, all of whom make her proud.
I furnish a trail of breadcrumbs, teardrops on pavement, as we leave the psychologist’s office.
“Your son has autism.”
Your tiny hand finds mine as we walk, my mind somersaulting over what our life will look like now.
“Mum, can I get a milkshake?”
Nothing changed.
Everything changed.
Belinda Saville is a Sydney-based jeweller who started writing to help her teenage daughter with high school English and find the joy therein. She is infatuated with the inherent beauty of gemstones, and of the written word.