Red theater curtains pull open, dust shaking itself from the satin folds.
The speakers announce The Universe. Stars and galaxies spin. You’re in the front row, eyes reflecting all of that cold bright space. You lean forward, crying.
When the orchestra’s first notes hum through your sternum, you are weightless.
Jessica is an aspiring author of lyrical fantasy and fantastical romances. She shares her writing process and book reviews on Instagram @jess.reads.too.much.
“You said you’d do it. Do it!” Patty demanded.
First, Tanner stared at the mallard’s smooth, storm cloud body as the buoyant bird moved peacefully atop the stream. Then at its metallic green head – too exotic for grey Nova Scotia.
Patty offered the rock with urgency and repeated, “Do it!”
Joe Couture is a writer living in rural Nova Scotia. He writes for his health. If you want to connect with him, try here: @rjcouture.bsky.social.
Joe shuffles to water’s edge to see the sunset. He’s retired, widowed, nearly broke.
A pastel sky bleeds away into twilight, into grayscale, into an impossible inkiness.
He’s alone, except for the loons who call out from the terrible void. Joe suddenly understands what they’re saying but doesn’t dare answer.
Hawkelson Rainier lives in the American Midwest. He dabbles in prose and poetry from time to time.
We’re in woodland with backpacks, introductions.
Glowing couples hold hands; our foraging instructor munches leaves. I nibble. He discusses elderflowers whilst sitting amidst daisies; we picnic on sourdough and dandelions.
“Wild mushroom pasta,” he says. “Folklore believes these fungi help people read minds.”
The couples devour bowlfuls, then leave separately.
Ellen Townsend is an art teacher and writer. Her work has appeared in Friday Flash Fiction and Paragraph Planet and has been broadcast on BBC Radio.
I wake and wander riverside
on a crisp winter morning.
Sunshine chases chills
from my bones
while my heart warms
with wonder
that I am welcome here
in what will always be
Aboriginal land.
My history not white-washed
but somehow forgiven.
My love for this place
a gift of grace.
Fiona H Evans has lived for 25 years in the suburb of Bayswater, by the Swan River in Perth. She walks the riverside every day in a place named Birralyn by local Noongar people long before it became Bayswater. Ever changing, ever the same, this place is as beautiful as it was 25 years ago. Probably as beautiful as it was a hundred years ago. Or 45,000 years ago, which is how long we have evidence of Noongar people living here. But of course, they’ve been here longer. This was always their land.
At dusk the fireflies light their tail torches announcing the Moth, a nightly collage of distinctive creatures gathering to soulcialize.
Standing on a toadstool, Ms. Frog reads her fifty-word story from a leaf(let).
Grasshopper saws his back-legged fiddle, offering up a jig as an ode to these gilded summer evenings.
Maria Miller gave up obsessive Solitaire for a much more satisfying 50-wording habit.
the town’s storyteller often used the word outwith
instead of outside
he claimed to have picked up
from Scottish and Yorkshire volunteers
now
the Garden’s shrinking around us
and there’s no other place left to live
we often say outwith among ourselves
concerning where
we’re going to find ourselves
soon
J.S. O’Keefe has published over three hundred short stories and poems in print and online literary magazines. See more at his website.
Bees hummed in the honeysuckle on the fence. A screen door squeaked open and slapped closed and porch chimes tinkled. Someone laughed in the backyard. Then tires screeched, metal thumped, and glass shattered. Someone screamed. Sirens wailed far away. Someone whispered and bees hummed in the honeysuckle on the fence.
Sean Burke lives with his husband and their grumpy little dog. When not writing, he works a day job to pay for a very small house with a yard to grow raspberries. Sean’s fiction has been published in Prime Number Magazine, Across the Margin, The Evening Street Review, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. His most recent stories can be found at seanpeterburke.com.
Branches above us let loose a sprinkling of helicopter seeds. Arms stretching up, seizing at spinning dancing things, we hold magic in our hands, as if we could keep still this moment, to grasp fully, like we weren’t ourselves some early sapling thing, small and green, not yet set solid.
Kate E. Lore is a queer, neurodivergent, femme she/her, born into a lower class/low income family, via a divorced, widowed, single mother of four. Under the pen name Kate E. Lore she has had a handful of short stories and nonfiction essays published with various literary magazines.
A leaf fell to her feet and she knew it was meant to be hers. She collected three more along her journey, each damaged in some way. Still – she found them incredibly beautiful, feeling a near obligation to appreciate them. Mere foliage? No. Not to her. Not to a witch.
Alicia is a Brooklyn-based writer and nature lover, often found wandering through Prospect Park, waiting for inspiration to strike – or perhaps fall to her feet. A firm believer that there is power in the wounds we carry, she hopes to transform pain into art, helping others reclaim their voice and strength, through creative and unapologetic non-fiction.