I let the tears fall. Years in that house… So many memories. Pictures that hung on the wall my entire life. Gone. Emptied out; packed up; now just boxes. Granddad’s gone. Grandma’s in a nursing home. Just an address now.
Still this place holds me, locked deep within my soul.
Alyce Clark is adjusting to sheltering in place, practicing social distancing when shopping for essentials… and truly missing her grandmother.
Legs straight, toes pointed, epicenter straddle split. Stand tall, back tree solid, arms regal, fingers pretty, chin queen high.
Grandkids whoop and holler and beg, more more! Curtsy regrets; hip pops on the low bend. Smile. Massage silent. Babies wheel the yard, breathless with dynamic pliable hips, mute with youth.
Sheree Shatsky writes short fiction believing much can be conveyed with a few wild words. Her work has been published in a variety of journals including The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Bending Genres, New Flash Fiction Review, KYSO Flash and The Conium Review with work forthcoming at Fictive Dream and Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art. She is twice-nominated for Best Microfiction 2020 by Fictive Dream and MoonPark Review. Read more of her work at shereeshatsky.com. She tweets at @talktomememe.
I crept under the front porch, swiped cobwebs, crawled over broken bricks and debris, sat cross-legged, bent, chewing on my braids. Jabbed at tears on my hot cheeks with grimy hands, ignoring the scurrying and slithering around me.
Above me, Mom and Dad were showing off my new baby brother.
MaryJane Nordgren is a retired family practice physician living in the foothills of the Oregon Coastal Range. Founder of Writers in the Grove, MJ enjoys laughing with and learning from fellow authors every Monday morning. Her novel NANDRIA’S WAR will be coming out soon.
The sky was full of white jellyfish. They were drifting down over everything. Parks, neighborhoods, baseball fields, the oil refinery. Thousands of them. Tiny stickmen with backpacks clung to them.
Papa was crying beside the window. “You must always share with your brother.”
Papa was a negotiator.
I didn’t understand.
Thomas Fitzgerald McCarthy is a licensed English teacher, poker player, and short story writer from New Jersey.
We didn’t live there anymore. Hadn’t for a decade.
And yet, as flames licked at the windows and devoured the roof, as smoke belched into the twilight sky, I stood on the hose-wet lawn suffocating, asphyxiating on the fumes of my childhood while firefighters tried—failed—to stop its burning.
Angela Teagardner has been selling books for twenty years – not her own though, not yet. A bookseller for pay and a writer for passion, she’s been writing stories and poetry since middle school. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband, daughter, and two extremely cranky cats.
I arrive at school hot, sweaty. I want to run like Usain Bolt. He runs as fast as a car. My teacher says it’s not possible to keep up that speed for long, but she’s wrong. She has to be.
When I can, I’ll be gone. From he-who-hits and she-who-ignores.
Laura Besley writes short fiction in the precious moments that her children are asleep. Her fiction has appeared online, in print and in various anthologies. She tweets at @laurabesley.
The zebra butterfly clung to the glass pane. His black and white wings drew the attentive fingers of the little boy on the window seat inside. Could he cradle this wonder in his hand?
The butterfly clapped his wings and lifted away. He carried with him all the toddler’s joy.
Gary Thomson lives in Ontario, where in his quiet moments he blows Beatles tunes on his Hohner harmonica.
Turn on lo-fi music. Drive my car so I can nap. Wake me up anyways to kiss. Roll down the windows, wind tangling my hair. Take me later for a bike ride; take me anywhere. Let me pick scabs off my knees without judgement. Let me be a kid again.
Autumn Bolte is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, pursuing a degree in Sociology with a minor in Creative Writing. She also interns with the Education Justice Project and works for the university’s Technology Services. In her free time, she enjoys writing short stories and flash fiction that attempt to examine the complexity of human nature. See more at autumnjbolte.weebly.com.
Fifty years ago they played the game: never step on the cracks, her brother warned. If you do, they open wide, then down you slip between the flagstones. You just disappear.
Now, dragging along the wheeled suitcase that holds the broken-backed remains of her life, she understands what he meant.
Mick Mangan lives in England, and writes plays, poems, songs, fiction and non-fiction. See more about his music at mickmangan.com.
We were soldiers of innocence at the rally point. Raging against real enemies in pretend combat. Holly berry bullets and stolen kisses in oak tree forts. Fighting the good fight, we sought redemption in afternoon light.
Then you left to fight a greater war.
I still wait for your return.
Katherine Rocheleau is a full-time writer, part-time vampire slayer, and hopeless chocoholic.