When you lost your heart, I lost a friend. Someone I trusted never to change.
You parade your bitterness in late night bars.
Yet remember the time we visited London? I carry my books now in the souvenir tote bag I bought there, my invisible tribute to a friendship destroyed.
Madeleine McDonald wrote this story.
Old and wizened, I stare down at my village as though through a jeweler’s loupe. Pink geraniums, moody velvet fuschia, and bigleaf hydrangeas peeking like incredulous heads begem the pathways that glow gold in the evening light. I have done good in my lifetime, but it has come too late.
Gabriel Tigay lives in New York City.
In the kitchen, he asked, “Has it been a good life?”
Such a profound question. It’s forty years together. Betrayals, indifference, hot burning anger, flashes of joy, perfunctory kisses.
“Not really,” I say. It’s a revelation.
“Get your hearing checked,” he shouts. “I asked, have you seen the good knife?”
Brenda is a retired university administrator. Someday she will finish writing the Great American Novel, and it will be Great, and her family will say, “Finally! Thank goodness.”
He was charming, golden, and soft around the edges. Said he was seasonal but didn’t mention how short that season was. I kept the pit after he left. Planted it in winter, but nothing grew. Sometimes I check the dirt anyway, just in case he changes his mind about permanence.
S. Janaki is a writer and college student based in the Midwest. She likes updating her Goodreads, long walks, and the way Adrienne Lenker writes about futures that never happened.
When my children were young, they’d play outside ‘til the streetlights came on. A cranky old lady lived down the block. They called her Crab. Woe be the kid who chased a ball across her lawn. Now that I’m old, I think I get it. It wasn’t about the lawn.
A prolific writer, Carol Reeves is loving the fun, freedom and challenge of Flash Fiction. She frequently writes about the privilege and vicissitudes of aging. Her stories are frequently published in Flash Fiction Magazine and 50 Word Stories. Her memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published in 2022.
Strawberries and wine, long nights on the porch, all-consuming, never-ending love. But the Universe changes in a heartbeat, our cabin, my heart, left to the ravages of time. Taxi drop at the end of the lane, an overgrown path, cheerless door, descending chill, ice cold hands pull my collar tight.
Chris Nedahl is a writer of anything and everything. Micro fiction, flash fiction and poetry are favourites. The desire to see her words published is increasing with age!
A streetlamp guides me, a blurred pool of light. My spine curves to the handlebars.
Yesterday my conceit ruled, and I left. Afterwards, I wrote to her: bungled, confused words about freedom.
I must reach her before the letter.
The lamppost’s swan-neck is thinned by fog, delicate as a nerve.
Elizabeth Leyland writes short and long fiction and lives in the UK. She has been published by 50-Word Stories, Paragraph Planet, Fairfield Scribes and CafeLit.
We measure it by increments—the infinite wheel of the cosmos—eons and ages. The languid traverse of shadow on a sundial. Days spool into memory—weeks into months, months into years. We had all the time in the world… until the blink of an eye and you were gone.
Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. In addition to 50-Word Stories, his writing has appeared in dozens of reviews, journals and anthologies. His first novel, “Deadline,” was published in September. He lives outside Chicago.
The weepy mother sits on the bed, closes her eyes, and plays pretend.
Dust no longer chokes the room. Sunlight softly trickles in.
Fate hasn’t supervened her promises to him of future magical milestones.
With a heavy sigh, she begrudgingly opens her watering eyes. The suffocating emptiness settles once more.
Kelly McSherry is a young author who currently resides in Washington, D.C.
Don’t look back, focus on what’s ahead, they say. But the past is where I find us, in all our adolescent glory, believing we’d share infinite tomorrows.
Our memories are a safety net waiting to catch me as I walk that fine line between reality and what could have been.
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who is grateful for cherished memories.