What if I hadn’t moved to this city and rented the apartment, right next to hers?
What if our paths hadn’t crossed at the bus stop, the coffee shop, the market?
What if she had let me love her and she had loved me back?
Would she still be alive?
Rita Riebel Mitchell writes in the Pinelands of South Jersey where she lives amongst the trees with her husband. Her work appears in HAD, Flash Fiction Magazine, Versification, and more. Find her at ritariebelmitchell.com/friday-micro/.
At exactly midnight, the clock struck, and Ramin Taham stood before the door, though he had no memory of arriving. Behind it, another room. A man in a suit handed him a letter, sealed with no name. “Your fate,” the man whispered, vanishing. Ramin opened it. The paper was blank.
Mohammad Abedi is a novelist, filmmaker, and child rights activist.
His novels have been translated into more than 15 languages, and his films and screenplays have been nominated for, or awarded prizes at, over 130 international flim festivals.
He is the founder of Hermes magazine and of Teachers Against Poverty (affiliated with Academics Stand Against Poverty). Abedi has completed some 30 academic courses at universities such as Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, Edinburgh, and the University California. He holds two honorary doctorates, in Philosophy and Social Justice, and teaches cinema, philosophy, and Persian literature. See more at mohammadabedi0.wordpress.com.
Eons ago, through binary fission and/or mitosis, we evolved into multicellular life forms, waiting for that perfect jiff, like ice floes coalescing into icebergs over time.
Perhaps we’d been destined for each other ever since that first moment I caught a glimpse of you, chasing your umbrella in the wind.
Andrea Damic (Sydney, Australia) writes when everyone is asleep. When she lacks words to express herself, she uses photography to do it for her. You can find her at damicandrea.wordpress.com.
Sitting in the morning
window, I gaze
at gray sky, gray trees,
curving tracks
in fresh spring snow.
Then a flicker, blue flutter—
quick color just beyond
the frame of my gaze.
I turn. Nothing
there, yet something
has shifted the beginning
of today. Some silent wing,
lifting the air.
Jennifer L Freed writes mostly poems, and sometimes writes very short stories. Please visit her website at jfreed.weebly.com.
Robb and I had eluded the Yeti in Tibet, Nessie in Scotland, and Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. But while on a Caribbean cruise seeking mermaids, I saw a green-haired female in a wheelchair stand up. Then she and Robb embraced, whereupon both leapt over the railing into the sea.
Don Nigroni has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Saint Joseph’s University and a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Notre Dame and worked as an economist for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This was it.
He knew the odds. They were forty-to-one. But he didn’t care about the odds. This was destiny.
“I don’t care about the odds,” he said aloud. “Screw the odds.”
“You should probably care about the odds,” said the hatchet-faced man holding the bag full of coloured balls.
A song on the radio triggered. She knew immediately that she had a destiny.
She quit her job, hitch-hiked to Vegas, and spent three days wandering aimlessly, waiting for a sign.
The cute waiter who served her fettucine asked her why she was eating alone.
They lived happily ever after.