The drive was rocky. Hanging out of the window of the car speeding past pine trees, barely clinging to the edge of a degrading dirt road, she felt free. Sitting on the edge of her seat, she stuck her hand out the window and played with the wind whipping past her fingers. Up and down up and down her hand went. As the road got rougher she tightened her seat belt, the last vestibule of safety in a spiraling series of events. She tucked herself in as if waiting for the kiss that never came, that hug that never happened.

From Guest Contributor Noah Bello

Debra sat beside her husband’s hospital bed, the click of the monitor a regular tune in her head. Barry laid there, his breathing calm and steady. Seeing him hooked up to tubes and unconscious was an unbearable sight. Still, she read to him daily and hoped he heard, but his eyes never opened. It had been one year since his car accident. Trauma to the brain was what the doctor called it.

As the doctor unplugged the monitor, Debra watched Barry’s chest stop moving.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

“Tell me words that describe your universe,” she begs, “give me images for what I can’t see.”

For the sake of our impossible love, for that morning when your world remained silent, for the memory of a destroyed planet.

From Guest Contributor Russell Hemmell

Russell is an alien from Mintaka snuggled into a (consenting) human host. Recent fiction on Gone Lawn, Not One of Us, Typehouse Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

Gary’s gasping two-hand tap against the wall earned second place in the breaststroke. Pete had less time to breathe.

Later, Pete laid in the tall grass behind the aquatic center. Silver-voiced male cicadas polished their mating song in desperation, chanting for a miracle.

From Guest Contributor Embe Charpentier

Harold is frightened into a jolt. “Who’s there?”

Harold awakes, his head leaning on Lois’ gravestone. “I can’t believe I dreamt I’ve seen Lois.” He drives away out of the darkness, and Lois appears blowing him a goodbye kiss.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

I was eighteen when I met you. I did not like you. When I was nineteen – I kissed you. My feelings changed. When I was twenty – I slept in your arms. My heart changed. When I was twenty-one I slept with you. I did not love you. You broke my heart for the first time. It healed.

Twenty years later, you still call. My heart has been sewn, ripped apart, and patched back together. It has been systematically desensitized from your ploys and is now just existing somewhere between my stomach and lungs. Biological in space yet empty in soul.

From Guest Contributor Lindsey Stevens

She was my first kiss at seven, she had a crush on me. She moved away a year later and was forgotten until high school when she found me on social media. I was busy, having parties and ignored her texts. In university, she found me again, through a friend, but I had no time, as I needed to study. Years later, by fortune, we bumped on the street. We talked for a few minutes, but that was all. Once more we met, this time at a funeral. Here I realized my folly, as I said goodbye to my soulmate.

From Guest Contributor Jordan Altman

I still remember the night when you left me, air thick with mist, the full moon hanging low like a moth in a tomb of cobwebs. Your deceitful voice was floating like paint fumes, stretching through the void.

Time has swallowed hundreds of full moons ever since, its belly round and black, cradled my sleepwalking heart, watched your features fading away from my memory. Now there’s nothing left of you but a woman in silhouette…

From Guest Contributor Cristina Iuliana Burlacu

I can judge this only by looking at them, but I think you almost certainly have the most kissable lips I have ever seen. They look soft and your bottom one hangs out from below the top one slightly in a way that is so graceful and delicate that it fills me with an immense desire to kiss it—and bite it a little. They are always of the correct moisture too; they are never dry nor too wet. They seem to have that perfect amount which makes them look radiant and healthy. Desperately, I want to kiss your lips.

From Guest Contributor Mark Beddard

Flamboyant scarlet blossoms arched twisting, winding heirloom English ivy. An

her sleep.

From Guest Contributor Christy Schuld