When Mother abandoned our family, I was ten and I was bereft. Why would she leave? Dad said Mother didn’t love me, like he did. But, Dad’s love was accompanied by belittlement and backhanded smacks. When Dad died in that crash, six years later, relief mixed with my self-pity.

I reunited with my boy at the funeral. He stood dumbfounded while I rushed to describe not feeling safe, fearing he’d turn “nasty” (like Rick), watching from afar, and all my regrets. I left when he started to look like Rick. I returned only when convinced he wasn’t becoming his father.

From Guest Contributor Bob Gielow

What kind of clouds do you like most, I asked, and he said definitely horsetail cirrus and then he said no cloud is like another and that’s when I told him what Judy said about zebras, that no two are the same; that each is as unique as a fingerprint and the young memorize their mother’s pattern to find them in the herd or running along the ancient migration where they hang out with wildebeests because zebras have keen eyes and wildebeests have keen noses and zebras eat long grass and wildebeests eat short. I like tall thunderheads, I said.

From Guest Contributor Jeanie Tomasko

I have waited for this moment since childhood. Now as an adult in my car with the engine running, I’m thinking of excuses to put my foot to the accelerator.

Would it be my mother or father who’d I’d be meeting for the first time?

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Six-year-old Monty, a master of his plastic sword, calculates strikes against imaginary giants while he takes cover behind backyard trees. When his mother’s voice pierces through his fantasy, calling him for dinner, the warrior boy marches home victorious.

While cleaning out his garage, Monty finds his plastic sword and wields it again, destroying enemies with a battle cry whoop. The brave boy/man rediscovers his inner sanctuary to face his lackluster world.

From Guest Contributor Leigh-Anne Burley

Beware, murderer. I know widows. I watched my mother become one, imagined how my face would bend and darken in the shadow of the word that means shroud, dusk, ash. What lies inside the bones of a woman who does not crumble before you—who wears this word to war, vowing not to yield? Something heavy: iron, redwoods. Oak, like him: an oak among reeds who knew he would be uprooted, just as she knows she will be. No, it is light, hydrogen fusion in the belly of a star, howling life, dawn, freedom. Beware of this widow on fire.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook Bhagat (she/her) is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won or placed in the top two in contests at Loud Coffee Press, A Story in 100 Words, and most recently, the Pikes Peak Library District 2023 fiction contest. It has been published in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal and a professor of creative writing Read her work and learn more about Only Flying at https://brook-bhagat.com/.

Brother declared himself ‘nonconformist,’ deciding back in grade school that rules and rituals mattered not.

Mother stopped making his bed. No one slept in it again.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes mainly short fiction and poetry.

I would pretend to be sleeping when he flipped on the light in my room. He would loom over me until my eyes opened. The walls would seem to lean in. Fear would distort my breathing. If I tried to scoot away, he would grab me by the arm and drag me back and crack me across the face with the flat of his hand. He was buried on a cold Sunday next to my mother. Some thirty people, mostly family, attended. It began to snow as stood at the graveside. He had finally found a solution to his loneliness.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

This can only last so long. There’s stuff I have to do. I gotta catch up on work and go for a run still today. I have papers due by midnight and I just put a pizza in the oven. I don’t have time for this. My friend keeps texting me “get on the game.” This can only last so long. I’m organizing due dates, scheduling movie nights with friends and stuttering replies to my mother. This can only last so long. My phone lights up with her face again, but like this poem love can only last so long.

From Guest Contributor Anonymous

I’d prefer to remain anonymous however I’d like to say a little about myself. I am not a writer but a teenage kid trying to graduate. I enjoy thinking deeply and taking the chance to put my thoughts on a page in a creative writing class is nice.

“Everything under control?”

“Interesting combination with chicken,” one stated, sampling mine. “There’s brandy. Definitely chocolate. Cherries are divine. What’s your dessert sauce?”

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season or location she finds herself in.

A twin, jealous of her sister’s looks, sends her into outer space.

You always liked her better, says the twin.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl’s recent fiction has appeared in Switch, Does It Have Pockets? Gone Lawn, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and elsewhere.