Turns out it wasn’t me. It was her.
Two weeks ago we were in the same place but not together, at the funeral for a mutual friend. She walked the church aisle with the guy she’d married. They made such an unpretty pair that I was freed from what ifs.
Kent Oswald writes, edits and pedagogs in NYC. Find additional words at kentoswald.com.
Penelope begs me to call her Mother.
I know what I did. I still love you.
Penelope moves through the house. Seems off, like a newspaper left out.
I needed space.
I believed she loved me. Missed her graceful gait, jokes, tender goodnights.
I utter that word.
Again.
So harsh.
Mir-Yashar is a graduate of Colorado State’s MFA program in fiction. A recipient of two Honorable Mentions from Glimmer Train, he has also had work nominated for The Best Small Fictions. Mir-Yashar’s work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such Scarlet Leaf Review, Ariel Chart, 50 Word Stories, and The Write City Magazine.
On what I didn’t know would be our last vacation, I wanted drinking and dancing; you, museums and cathedrals.
I craved fun and abandon, a pretense there was still joy between us.
But you embraced the passage of time, beheld the mold and the rot, unflinching, preparing to let go.
Maura Yzmore is a writer and science professor based in the American Midwest. See more on her website and follow her on Twitter at @MauraYzmore
She reads quietly in the corner, sublimely beautiful. Serene. Her soul surrounds her, highlighting every motion, drawing me like a moth to a flame. I’m not worried that I’ll burn, only that she’ll never notice my tiny spark against her brightness.
Smiling, she looks up from her book. “Hi, there.”
Raven Corinn Carluk writes dark fantasy, paranormal romance, and anything else that catches her interest. She’s authored five novels, where she explores themes of love and acceptance. Her shorter pieces, usually from her darker side, can be found in Black Hare Press anthologies, at Detritus Online, and through Alban Lake Publishers. Keep up to date with her and enjoy many free reads on RavenCorinnCarluk.blogspot.com, or join her on Twitter at @ravencorinn for daily microfictions.
The face was there, but the rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes were absent, absconded along with ready smile and gleeful giggles, lost in memories.
She wore civvies, not the nun’s habit she had hiked up a little to play football with us as children.
The coffin also took her voice.
Perry McDaid is a writer of prose and poetry who has developed a taste for pastels. They’re a tad chalky but provide roughage.
We used to talk for hours about films and art, but now you just deliver monologues about your boring job, your arthritic toe, and the awful weather.
I’m shocked by how quickly you changed closeness into carefully manipulated distance.
Now you’ve unfriended me. I only wish I’d got there first.
Juliet is an adult education tutor, crafter, and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, UK. She blogs at craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com and tweets at @craftygreenpoet.
You’re the responsible one, his will said. I leave these to you.
She opens the albums. Carefully labeled photos; dates, names, genealogical charts, news clippings.
Also: many pictures of her brother, but none of her.
Out of respect for the dead, she waits six months before she burns it all.
Graham Robert Scott teaches writing at a university in north Texas. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse Online, Nature, and X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine.
He turns off the flashlight. They’re in total darkness. Water laps against their boat. A drop of water lands on her head.
“It’s just a cave kiss,” he says.
She doesn’t like caves or boats. She does love this man. She closes her eyes and dreams she is the moon.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
The old man’s smell in her palm
Memory spread the pang of last lovemaking
Dark rain pecked the windows; dark sun shone; the coffee mug held her hands
New Yorkers’ podcast still on; it kept rewinding
Yet she couldn’t stay in this repetition of life
When they were both evaporating.
Azarin Sadegh, a 2011 PEN America Emerging Voices fellow, a LARB contributor, and a former student of the late Les Plesko, is working on a new novel.
My heart has shattered and the shards are everywhere.
Each shard a memory, each memory most precious.
Goodbyes were said, tears were shed, hugs gratefully given and received.
The end of the school year; I will never see most of these students again.
China is a long way from America.
Daniel Quillen is retired and living in China, teaching English at a Chinese university. He just wrapped up his final semester there.