Option 1: The books I’ve read on the left hand side, those I haven’t on the right hand side.

First, the daily routine: checking the updates, every day at the same time, hoping they announce that during the past 24 hours there were no fatalities to regret, no one was admitted to hospital and all those that have been – even those in Intensive Care – were allowed to leave. But that didn’t happen today. Today, I try keeping it together by choosing between two options.

From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys

Hervé SUYS (°1968 – Belgium) started writing short stories whilst recovering from a sports injury and hasn’t stopped since.

It’s Halloween and I’m at my wife’s grave for her anniversary. She died three years ago, and I made a promise that I would be there every year to place a large pumpkin next to her headstone.

I looked back at the grave and the pumpkin was gone.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

I take a bite of the chocolate cheesecake, stolen from a remote corner of the refrigerator and want to savor with closed eyes, but I don’t dare. Mom can come anytime. I gobble it up, throwing the carton in the trash.

I look at the book I’m supposed to be reading and try to hide my shame, my secret. The same secret that’s hers when she introduces her teenage daughter to her friends, her eyes apologizing for the girth of my thighs.

From Guest Contributor Anuradha Dev

“You are served!”

“Hmm. No contact, the papers state, so I won’t know. Let me think. I haven’t bought her a birthday present for four or five years, but she doesn’t like what I buy anyway. I always turn over all of the money I make. She is a great bookkeeper. No ‘out to dinner,’ but I cook often. I don’t do dishes. The kids are grown and out on their own. We don’t talk too much. I imagine she emptied out the savings. Where are Ted and I gonna get stoned? Where am I to sleep?”

From Guest Contributor Virginia Timm

She was sitting on the bed, crying and feeling “something’s wrong, I should be asking for help,” but she couldn’t remember who or what she should be asking. Everything in her brain was white static. Secretly she wanted to see beautiful color, a purple that vibrates at the very end of the spectrum. Anyone observing her would have probably concluded she would never get away – away from clock faces with Roman numerals, the tyranny of structure, all those people going about their day on a busy street. When something needs water, you water it, you don’t just hope for rain.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s latest poetry collections are The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

The sliver of moon that hung in the dark sky was the only source of light on that cold evening. It had been raining for hours, and the parking lot was now a collection of puddles. Exhausted after a long day, the woman trudged across the lot to her car. She despised leaving work late, since she was still adjusting to her new life in the city. Preoccupied with thought, she didn’t realize that her new life was already over until she reached her car and found a note tucked under her windshield. “Found you,” it screamed in his handwriting.

From Guest Contributor Kelsey Swancott

Kelsey is a senior majoring in English with a minor in Visual Arts and Spanish while also being involved in the campus literary magazine Angles. She plans on furthering her education by getting her master’s degree in English as well.

I’m inside my own mouth, seeing what the dentist sees. I’m awed by the whiteness of my teeth – their lingual surfaces, anyway. I don’t notice the tongue, any more than a carpet under my feet. The teeth are like panels of marble. But they have labels on them, which seem to be just A4 sheets printed out and laminated, as we might stick up temporarily on an office door. Some of them seem to be self-praise for fillings and crowns: “Great Job!” and “Fabulous!” But there is criticism as well: “Lousy cap that she got in Italy in the 1990s.”

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Caesar

Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.

“Is this what you thought married life would be like?”

Smiling, I answer, “Oh yes…even better than I thought.”

From Guest Contributor Mike Nolan

Mike is a freelance writer living happily ever after in Port Angeles, WA, USA. Mike is the author of the forthcoming memoir My Second Education, and has a web presence at mikenolanstoryteller.com.

The enormous house consisted of large acres of land with an abundance of flower and vegetable gardens. Violet’s only companion was her cat Missy.

In the basement, the deceased prior owner chortled.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M.Scuderi-Burkimsher

“We’re joined today by the great Cuban émigré slugger Robinson Falco Villegas, Jr.”

“Were it not for penalties, you’d be dead now.”

From Guest Contributor Clyde Liffey