by Chris Cochran

An old man precariously balancing a six-foot ladder above his head walks the middle of the bike path ahead. “On your left,” I call. He turns, swinging the ladder in my direction. I brake hard and swerve into the wet grass. My road tire slips sideways. I overcorrect and topple.
 
The old man, unbothered, continues walking down the path, ladder high above his head. He never sees me or, more likely, doesn’t care. I lift my bike and change directions, promising myself that when I’m older, I’ll leave room for others to pass.

* * *

CHRIS COCHRAN is a high school English teacher whose stories keep getting shorter. He lives in Michigan with his wife and son, where he spends most evenings drinking tea and falling asleep to comedy podcasts.

by Karen Walker

The art gallery has rejected it.    
Feel was pacing, and I was napping when the thanks-snicker-but-no-thanks call finally came.
On the way to pick up our painting, Feel wants to talk.
I don't.  
Feel sniffles.
Of course there's no tissue left in the car. Of course Feel used the entire box on the way home after I broke up with John.
Our painting is of his flowers and his card. Says, "Love you. Please don't leave."  
Feel says it hurts.
"Am sure it does," I reply.
The gallery is on the third floor. I climb the stairs alone. Feel stays in the car. 

* * *

KAREN WALKER writes and draws and paints in Ontario, Canada. Her recent work is in or forthcoming in Does It Have Pockets, SoFloPoJo, Weird Lit, Hotch Potch, and Literary Garage. 

by Elliott Fielding

I was lying on the farmhouse kitchen floor surrounded by a family reunion’s worth of worried grownups. There was blood from a slice like an eye had opened in the middle of my calf, revealing something pink and streaked. 

“I think we should drive to town for stitches,” one aunt said. 

“It’s not that deep, a butterfly bandage would be enough,” my grandma countered.     
                                                                                                             
My leg was the center of everyone’s attention, but instead of embarrassed, I felt proud. I had after all been with the cool aunt, climbing a ladder—a metal one, sharp at the edges—to look at a black racer snake draped over the barn rafters. After the ladder tipped, I’d hobbled into the house with blood running down my leg, but no tears. 

My mom knelt down next to me. “Do you want stitches?” she asked. “You might have a scar, otherwise.” 

They were asking? I was old enough to be given a choice? The word “stitches” made my stomach contract and my scalp tingle. I was too surprised to speak so I answered with a shake of my head: no stitches. The bandages were found and Grandma pulled the eye closed, butterfly by butterfly, into a red-line squint. 
​
On the last day of the reunion, we all drove to the lake to swim. I was forbidden from the water until I pleaded “look, it’s all closed up” and Mom, to my surprise, let me go in. The August-warm water softened the scab and the eye popped open. I didn’t say anything, though; I knew if I did, I’d be stuck sitting on the hot, thorny sand watching my cousins play chicken fight. I didn’t care about any scar and they had asked, after all. It was my leg, my choice—my favorite scar.

* * *

ELLIOTT FIELDING is a Coloradoan who writes for the love of words and the challenge of creating stories from experience and imagination. Xyr short narratives have appeared or are forthcoming in ScribesMICRO, MoonPark Review, Examined Life, and Five Minutes. 

by Clodagh O Connor

How alive you were, born from me as clear water, burbling over small pebbles, curving around granite rocks, rushing down mountain slopes.

How you ignored my warnings, leapt down rock faces, not looking ahead until you found yourself trapped in man-made places.

How you were forced into channels, told what was expected of you, pushed underground.

How you were sullied by the foulness of that life, but you pushed on, found your strength, burst forth.

How you deepened and grew powerful, stopping for nothing until you embraced the wide, wild, open ocean.
​
* * *

CLODAGH O CONNOR lives in Dublin, Ireland, and is working on becoming a writer. She particularly enjoys the challenges of tiny fiction. She can be found on Bluesky at @iamagnat.bsky.social.​

by Beth Sherman

My father never wanted me to swim in case I drowned. At the beach, he hovered as I constructed elaborate sandcastles erased by the tide. The ocean glittered, snarling like a beast stalking its prey. Once, I tried a back float in the community pool, his hands cupping my body, lifting me clean out of the chlorine so I floated on air. Let go, I wanted to tell him, imagining the plunge to the bottom, cradled in blue. But I saw fear in his eyes and couldn’t even master the dog paddle. At sleep away camp, the counselors tried to teach me, following the usual progression—blow bubbles, turn head, windmill arms, flutter kick, let go of the edge. By then, I dreaded swimming as my father surely intended, hated that drowning sensation when water surged up my nose, the frantic struggle to breathe.

Decades later, dying of leukemia, he showed me a faded photo of his younger self with a woman who wasn’t my mother and a daughter who wasn’t me. Instantly I knew. That girl, a child with solemn eyes and postcard-perfect curls, had swum out too far one day, in a lake somewhere in Wisconsin where my father once lived. I pictured her drifting like a lost mermaid, fish wriggling through the sockets of her eyes. No, my father said, as I held a cup of ice chips to his lips. Car accident. He was driving. One careless moment: fumbling with the radio, taking his eyes off the road. A lifetime of regrets. Be safe, he whispered, although I think we both knew that was as likely as me gliding through rough waters, swimming straight and true.

* * *

BETH SHERMAN is the author of HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE (Ad Hoc Fiction). She has had more than 250 stories published in literary journals and has also written five mystery novels. 

by Kelleigh Cram

Click.

Multi-colored light fills the room, waking me. This is the part when I get up, go about my day, facing trials and tribulations of the lighthearted variety for the amusement of strangers. It always starts the same, that music, upbeat with a moralistic tone. I can’t remember what happened between this moment and reading my name on the closing credits, but the dread of it clings to me, a reminder that none of this is real. I open the door as the song ends, delivering a perfectly timed one-liner. 

Pause.

My hand stops mid-air, reaching for the mug. During pause I am incapacitated yet fully aware, the closest my conscious mind gets to the in-between. The moment stretches on, locking me in place while pulling me apart like one of those medieval torture devices. Unable to move I am forced to remember the darkness, the nothing, the act of non-existence that is my life without an audience. 

Rewind.

A force yanks me backwards until the door closes in front of me. Once again I step out of my bedroom, delivering the punch line to an awaiting laugh track. I don’t know how they stand it, feigned amusement, just as happy hearing the joke for the thousandth time as the first. 

Mute.

I pour the coffee, no splash as the liquid hits ceramic. The cup steams in silence.

Unmute. 

I slurp, hot liquid searing my insides as the pain crawls up my ribcage. I cry out, but only half a scream.

Click.

* * *

KELLEIGH CRAM resides in a small town near Savannah Georgia. Her work has been featured in Bright Flash Literary Review, Bacopa Literary Review, and Right Hand Pointing.

by Kathryn Kulpa

Have you ever noticed the grass that grows in the cracks on the highway? Maybe it’s on the soft shoulder, the breakdown lane, the verge. Maybe it’s on the median strip. Maybe it’s on the old exit spur, no longer used. It’s not pretty spring grass. It’s brown December grass, and if drivers notice it at all they just wonder if the highway’s being kept up, but mostly they don’t notice because they are listening to directions or sneaking glances at a text on their phones or worrying about being late and losing the jobs they hate but can’t quit because they would lose their healthcare, because they live in America and their lives mean less than the scraggly-ass grass that grows where nobody planted it. It’s not a flower or a topiary or a heritage tree. Maybe it’s an invasive species, like Japanese stiltgrass or pepperweed, and if the highway department notices those unruly spikes breaking through asphalt they only want to poison it, but the grass mowed down in their weekly Roundup finds its way past poured concrete to re-cover the earth. It’s here, and it grows, and it doesn’t care if you don’t think it should be here.

* * *

KATHRYN KULPA lives in New England. Sometimes she writes poems on the side of the road. She would stay up all night reading if you let her. Find her writing in Best Microfiction, Flash Frontier, Ghost Parachute, Hot Flash Literary Review, trampset, and at kathrynkulpa.com.

by Bonnie Demerjian

Right there in the video, the man sings
to the tigers.
Two of them behind the gate, the perimeter bare where they have paced.
He sings in French and though they may be Bengalese
they understand and music’s magnet draws them nearer.
Haunches settle, one begins to moan, another
then the man, a trio now.
Great jaws agape, the fence no barrier— 
sound dissolves it—and the screen of species parts
for the length of a song
a glimpse of oneness til the twitching tail, the coda,
marks the ending.

* * *

BONNIE DEMERJIAN write from her island home in the Tongass National Forest, a place of mountains and ocean. Her poetry has appeared in Cirque Journal,  Artemis, The Alaska Literary Field Guide, and others. Her chapbook, Flotsam and Jetsam is newly released.

by Sarah Senft

He uses … in his emails
every one of them

familiar now
always three dots

I can almost hear him
speaking them

They leave space
to soften
what comes before

or after

comfort
gentle
like him

always …

* * *

Sarah is a writer living in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in The Closed Eye Open, 50-Word Stories, Bending Genres, Ivo Review, Halfway down the Stairs, Fish Girl Collective, The Martello Journal, Interrobang Lit, Feel Lit Magazine, Orange Rose Lit mag, Maudlin House and others.

by Alyson Hagedorn

Dancing feet have no room for tears.
They stomp without fear
or weakness.
They are brave and they are flexible.
They are free and they feel everything.

Dancing arms have no room for headaches.
They are graceful and spasmodic
and fluid and functioning.

Dancing hips have no room for jealousy. 
They sway with the rhythm 
and against it— 
this way and that
inviting you to be present.

Dancing feet 
and arms 
and hips 
lead to dancing spirits
and I rather like that possibility.

* * *

ALYSON HAGEDORN is a High School English teacher living in Dutchess County, New York with her husband and two sons. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from SUNY Brockport and later received a Master of Arts in Teaching English from Stony Brook University.

by Leonard St-Aubin

Windblown pale dry sand
sweeps down the tall dunes and drifts
north across the land. 
Like the Sahara, you say.
But these shallow pools
at our feet, like no mirage,
contain the deep sky,
a patchy blue with white clouds, 
on wet-hard tide flats.
Eagles on the crest of dunes
survey the wide beach,
spread their wings and ride the wind
in circles, searching.
We search too, for driftwood, yes,
and new memories. 
We turn when the sky turns grey.
I follow your red hoodie
like a beacon on the shore.

* * *

LEONARD ST-AUBIN divides his time between Ottawa, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. His poems have been published in The Hoolet’s Nook, in RED: The Island Story Book, in bywords.ca, and the Pownal Street Press collection FIONA.

by Zoë Davis

but never the silverfish
​eating history
sometimes wallpaper
feral in a bookshelf. I relate
to being called
something I am not
sexy sibilant sanguinity
static air
thumb-rubbed roll-up
yellowing tin. In the attic
other insects are singing
belly full of coins
I scoffed the pair
placed over my eyes.

* * *

ZOË DAVIS is a Sheffield-based writer, wheelchair rugby league player, and stubborn FND fighter. Her poetry and prose blend the fantastical with the mundane. Find her work in Strix and Roi Fainéant, or chat with her on X @MeanerHarker.

by Eli Noel

I yearn to see life through a child’s eyes
To find wonder in the sky, the trees, the ground
To wonder why a road was built and where it leads
To feel how big the world is once more
To see different people and not wonder where they came from, but rather why they are here
To smile and laugh freely
To feel solid where I stand
To understand who I am without worrying about who I need to be
To love a dog like a brother, because dogs never die
To dream and believe they will come true
To leave the trials of life to the adults, because I am just a child

* * *

ELI NOEL is a student at the University of Nebraska-Kearney. In his free time he coaches football at Kearney Catholic High School. He currently resides in Kearney, NE.

by Leah Mueller

It is time
to get rid of
our yellow teacups.

You’re not
coming home
for tea.

* * *

LEAH MUELLER's work appears in Rattle, Best Small Fictions, Certain Age, Writers Resist, The Shallot, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net.

by Sophia Adamowicz

not fresh flowers, because desiccated petals never wilt, and because lopped-off buds require no water and no sun, and because, when the dried orange peel and cinnamon sticks lose their fragrance, I can lavish them with artificial sweetness, and because nothing in this house ever grew as it should, and because flowers with the suppleness of a child’s cheek remind me of the times I never wiped yours.

Let the fresh flowers remain at the field’s edge, where they may spill their seeds to the wind and never have to bear the weight of what one person owes another.

* * *

SOPHIA ADAMOWICZ is a writer and tutor based in Cambridge, UK. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in several publications including Cunning Folk, Crow & Cross Keys, Haven Speculative and Trash Cat Lit. Her debut novel, The Brink, releases next year.