Chatter heightened in a resort restaurant.

It was his sister.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Timothy stepped out into the cold evening air and briskly walked to the flower shop to buy a dozen red roses to propose to his girlfriend Isabelle. He had the ring in his inside coat pocket and his proposal branded in his memory.

When Timothy arrived, stunned from what he saw through the living room window, he dropped the roses. Isabelle and his brother Tony were passionately kissing.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Landslide. Highway closed. Closest motel, five miles back.

Next day’s news revealed that a bear had to be tranquilized on the
grounds, taken back into the woods.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Published
at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, 101 Words,
Boston Literary Magazine, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press),
ShortbreadStories, SixWordMemoirs, and Espresso Stories.

Joseph peered out his bedroom window, the summer sun beating on his old tired face. At ninety-five, he didn’t care. He enjoyed watching the children play hopscotch, giggling and waiting for the bells of the ice cream truck. Every time, the girls would drop their chalk and run to the sound. In the background birds flew from tree to tree. Joseph remembered those summer days as if it were yesterday.

Joseph turned in his wheelchair and took his medication. He knew any day he’d never see those children play again.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

I stare out the window watching the torrents of rain pound the leaves on my maple tree and listen to the ferocious wind hit against the siding of my house. My dog Patty barks and scratches the windowpane. I pull her next to me on the couch and rub her stomach, the only thing that soothes her. Roads are closed due to flooding and I’m stuck at home.

It’s funny how things turn out.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

I helped move your walker over the curb. You listened as I shared my emotional grief. We became friends.

I read your obituary. Memories touched with an afterglow.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her work has been published at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, 101 Words, Boston Literary Magazine, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), ShortbreadStories, SixWordMemoirs, and Espresso Stories.

She consoles the dust for being lonely. The rust for being needy. The rot for becoming unstitched by rain. It is easy to whisper these things on the day of rest. When even birds decline seeding and bees stay inside hives. There was little moving in the sparse outside, save a cat prowling between an empty peach bucket and a splintered fish pole leaned against fence rails, its frayed point vanishing in the tale’s middle.

She sits with tears on her cheek. Cheek on her hand. Pinkie finger tracing glass. Watching her three level acres all forlorn, infertile, sour, outworn.

From Guest Contributor Catherine Moore

Catherine is the author of three chapbooks including “Wetlands” (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her fiction appears in Tahoma Literary Review, Illinois Wesleyan University Press, Tishman Review, Mid-American Review, and The Best Small Fictions of 2015 anthology.

The nausea didn’t truly begin until about 20 minutes after. I sat there in the bathroom staring at a singular particle of black mold on the hinge that connects the seat to the toilet, editing my breathing so I could overhear the conversation they were having on the porch. I loved listening to their voices— hearing other people living. It was unusually bright in that bathroom. “Am I the only one who’s seen this mold?” I thought to myself. I got up and walked over towards the frosted glass window to close it, hearing the voices pause shortly after. Unfortunately.

From Guest Contributor Michael T. Schulte

Public poems built on public property are, as they say, asking for it. When you use such flimsy bread, eating away at holy Wonder until such thinly-sliced letters remain, every one meant to be swallowed, not whispered; when you hold them down with found rocks in a stream that is not a stream, just a concrete ditch void of the hand of God; when you slip out the window in the night like a Sufi thief or an idiot child, praying the wrong way, dancing naked, licking vowels in your own nonsense language
don’t expect to get anything
except
arrested.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

After graduating with a BA in English from Vassar College, Brook Bhagat landed her first paid writing job as a reporter for a small-town Colorado newspaper. She left it to travel to India, where she fell in love, got married and canceled her ticket home. She and her husband Gaurav write freelance articles for dozens of publications, including Outpost, Ecoworld, and Little India. In 2013, they launched www.BluePlanetJournal.com, which she edits and writes for. She also teaches writing at a community college, is earning her MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University, and is writing a novel.

The house-bricks were as red as the little squirrel which inhabited the tree just outside.

The blow rattled his eyes.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid