It started with gummies. Her mother placed a bag inside her lunch box every day. She gave them all away, hoping the other kids would like her.

She stepped into the bakery, bought lemon cake, and ate it.

From Guest Contributor Faye Rapoport DesPres

Faye is the author of the memoir-in-essays Message From a Blue Jay and the Stray Cat Stories children’s book series. She lives and writes in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He’s feeling less than complete this morning. Some parts have vanished; most just haven’t woken up yet; a couple are only pretending to be there. But for the most part, for one inexplicable reason or another, he’s feeling incomplete.

All he needs is seven magic words.

From Guest Contributor Ron. Lavalette

Ron.’s debut chapbook, Fallen Away (Finishing Line Press) is now available at all standard outlets. Many of his published works can be found at EGGS OVER TOKYO.

I feel warmth from looking at the hydrated light glistening on the soft petals of the daisy. I also feel cold from observing the water droplets slowly slipping off of those same petals as they struggle to keep their grip. The daisy, once a seed, now a flower. She contains just as much life as she did hidden in the soil. I know the daisy will not be here forever. I know I will not be here forever. I know you will not be here forever. One day the daisy will be pushed; dead. As every other daisy before it.

From Guest Contributor Winter Daisy

Winter is an author that has a deep desire to make a difference. To read more from them go to https://linktr.ee/winterdaisy.

The unbalanced hostage-taker suddenly meekly surrendered to his Jewish hostages. A delegation of angels in a tree outside the synagogue hooted in derision and then rose into the sky and flapped away, leaving mysterious future gaps in the fossil record. In that instant, I became convinced of the essential stupidity of strictly adhering to any particular plan. And don’t think I didn’t know that, with my droopy face and drab old clothes, I looked like an unassimilable immigrant from a strange country – someplace dark and rainy and governed by contradiction, where there are no clues or, rather, only false ones.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.

We knew that the Dragon was on the train, hired to guard the locked safe that held the payroll. Too many armed clerks had been lost. But in such a small space, the Dragon could not stretch his wings, could not swing his claws. If he used his fire, the wooden train car would burn. Yes, the safe would survive, but it might fall to the tracks and be subject to anyone with the block and tackle to retrieve it. No one knew it was the Dragon we were after. You would think they would have noticed the giant collar.

From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner