I wheel Grandpa to the men’s restroom, but there’s no disabled stall. He struggles into a non-accessible one, clutching the doorframe, the toilet roll holder, reaching. I try to help, but he waves me away. I tell him I’ll wait outside. I tell him I’m here if he needs me.
Iain Grinbergs is an English professor and the author of Vanity Twist, a chapbook (Bottlecap Press).
Remember we reached out to each other and brought our sprawling, diverse county together? It wasn’t eastside or westside, it wasn’t over there. It was right here, with the smoke and ash settling in our backyards, filling our noses, and making our eyes water. None of us were unaffected. Remember?
Janet Clare’s first novel, novel, Time Is the Longest Distance, was published in 2018 and her second novel, True Home, will be published in May 2025. She previously had fiction and essays published online and anthologized. She lives in Los Angeles. See more at janetclarewriter.com.
Parents pull children from rubble, hold them to their breasts, kiss dust from tear-stained cheeks. I push the beam off my own chest. I’m shivering. From the cold or from sobbing, I can’t tell. My father finds me. He leans down and lovingly wraps a signed cheque around my shoulders.
Angeline Schellenberg is the author of Tell Them It Was Mozart, Fields of Light and Stone, and the 2024 release, Mondegreen Riffs. Her 50-word story was selected for Best Microfiction 2024. She is a spiritual director and host of the Speaking Crow open mic in Winnipeg, Canada. angelineschellenberg.wordpress.com
I entered her kitchen
on a dark cold night
looking only for food.
But what I found was a feast
of understanding and affection.
Delicious lips tasted my despair.
Strong arms soothed bitter wounds.
My tear-stained heart nourished and healed,
the darkness disappeared.
At her table, she fed me love.
Peter Blau believes everyone has a story to tell and in his teaching he invites students to tell those stories with their writing. His work has been featured in 50-Words as well as Academy of the Heart and Mind, Paragraph Plant, and Five-Minute Lit. To Peter, writing is more than just a means to an end. It is the end in itself.
Through altruistic compassion of neighbours, Ruth Epstein scrounges for food, and coal for her burner. She hurries through desolate alleys to her flat at Thirty-five Rue Rossini for fear of being singled out. Once inside, she adjusts heavy dark curtains across window casings. August 1944: France is liberated. Ruth weeps.
Ilona Rapin is addicted to the curiosity and excitement of wandering the world which inspires her to write short stories about her impressions.
As she climbs the dusty stairs, she begins to disappear. When revelry has ended she descends, part by part appearing, and she becomes her duties.
By the time she reaches the street she will seem entirely whole, as if she had never been invisible, as if she’d never been gone.
Rosanne Ehrlich’s work has appeared in The Voices Project, Persimmon Tree, Panoplazine and Vine Leaves Press among others.
“Solitary” is an obnoxious euphemism.
Left adrift for far too long; you rush to reel me in only after loneliness manifests as a cry for help. Rejecting an uncertain hand half-extended, my head swirls, stranded in a sea of dissonance. To then soften your sin with semantics? I’d rather drown.
橘ケン (Tachibana Ken) is an aspiring MMA fighter.
Selling the old apartment where everything reminded him of the happier times, he moved to the sad outskirts of the town where he stood now in the ailing flower shop, unable to decide between the pink hyacinth and a lilac hydrangea, both in dire need of some tender loving care.
Nelly Shulman is a writer currently based in Berlin. Her work has appeared on JewishFiction.net, in the Vine Leaves Press Anthology of the Best 2021 Flash Fiction and in Sky Island Journal.
The sun slides into the horizon
Waves crash the shore
I slip down
Through grainy sand
Let me drown in the sand
It is here that I feel nothingness
Do not throw me a rope or even a prayer
I want to fall into this abyss:
The silence is peace.
Katherine Darlington has articles in many publications including poetry anthologies, and literary journals. She also has several published novels. See more of her work at katherinedarlington.com.
I scream but nobody hears me.
I bleed and nobody cleans it.
I cry but there is no tissue in sight.
So I leave.
I leave the place where there is no help.
Don’t miss me now when you think of this;
Help me yesterday.
Tomorrow is too late.
Denise Banks is currently in the grade 12 year of high school.