Meredith by Zach Murphy

Each night, Meredith places her husband’s blue terry cloth robe next to her in the bed. Before she turns off the dusty bedside lamp and drifts into her dreams, she drapes the robe’s fraying sleeve across her body, hoping to feel a faint embrace, if just for a fleeting second. When she wakes in the morning, sometimes she smells the aroma of dark roast coffee wafting into her bedroom. As she journeys downstairs, the steps creek like her bones. She looks into the kitchen and it’s always empty. Maybe the aroma has lingered in the tattered walls. The walls hold a lot of history. Or maybe the aroma has lingered in her head. Her head holds a lot of memories. She keeps the windows closed during the day,
even when the temperatures are sultry. This makes it easier to feel a desperate breeze. The house is over a century old, so she realizes it’s no stranger to witnessing drafts. At dinner time, she swears she sees the tablecloth move every once and a while, especially on the nights when she cooks her husband’s most cherished meal of beef stroganoff, garlic potatoes, and red peppers. She knows that your eyes can play tricks on you, but she’d rather not blame her cataracts. After the sun sets, the same routine begins. Some people
fear ghosts, but Meredith fears missing out on what could have been. Time is an excruciating toothache when it doesn’t give you what you long for. Meredith learns that moving forward is even harder when you want to be haunted by the past.

Zach Keali’i Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in The MacGuffinReed MagazineThe Coachella ReviewRaritan QuarterlyAnother Chicago MagazineLittle Patuxent Review, and more. He has published the chapbook Tiny Universes (Selcouth Station Press). He lives with his wonderful wife, Kelly, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Little Brother by Jessie Skyes

The agony of becoming a parent to a child who has the same parents I do. 

I held him tightly,
in fear that if I let go he would disintegrate into what my parents wished us to become.
Disappear into the perfect cookie cutter children we were trained to be,
dissolve into the madness of never fitting the role.

I love you to the moon and back, little brother.
I want to scream at the top of my lungs.
Screams curdling in the back of my throat like the two week old milk no one drank because my sister left it here when she left us.
Cries that get caught in my throat like a heartbeat

The words rang in my head as she walked out the front door.
They mute my sobs, begging her to not leave me in the middle of the warfare
Of my mother and father’s slamming doors and the spitfire of fully automatic insults.
Does your heart still beat for me?

“I love you to the moon and back, little sister.”

Because there is no more “little sister.”
Now I am big,
Now I am grown,
Raising a child that isn't even my own.

We may be the same blood, but what draws the line between matron and sister.
It is the love that expands in my chest with every breath,
I breathe for you, brother.
Every day my heart beats to make it to the moon
And every day, for the rest of my life, my heart will beat to come back to you.

I want to scream.
“Brother!
I love you with every beat of my heart,
with every breath in my lungs,
I will love you until the day I die.”

You will never feel how I feel, little brother.

Lean on me and I shall bring you to the moon and show you the entire galaxy along the way.
Come with me out of this burning house,
Let me bring you home.
Home among the stars and the moon,
Let me keep you in the safest place I know, my arms

Let me hold you through this pain,
Let me hold you as tight as the vines around my heart hold my love for you.
Lean on me, little brother.
Even as the years go by,
I still hold you as tight as the vines around my heart hold my fear in letting you go,
You will always be my little brother.

“But big sister, I see the battles you fight. Let me go, big sister. For I am not so little anymore.”

Our World by Sam Bono

The world engaged within a dream
a made-up world, seen through a seam
Lust, no thought; intense desire
a life result in burning fire
long-lasting taste, a tongue removed
who would have thought,
life unapproved
The poor and rich stand far apart
the poor; no money
the rich; no heart
These wars, the countries, enemies sworn
who to blame, good families torn
Our country built on being free,
Do our oppressors,
Tend you or me?
No thought put into this horrid game
But we all play it so who’s to blame?
Wake up wake up!
But now you see,
This world we live in, is no dream.

Sam Bono is a Freshman at Hagerstown Community College. There he plays baseball and majors in education. He loves going to the beach and hanging out with friends and family.

The Leap by J.B. Polk

It was happening! Leila's nightmare was about to come true! The thing had finally managed to make its way into her abdomen, coiling around her intestines like a ten-foot viper and setting her pancreas and liver ablaze. She was sure light would soon spring out of her belly button!

Her thoughts went back to that August day in 1995. Lunch was Welsh rarebit with roast potatoes followed by watermelon. Mom recited a Charles Simic poem as she slit its belly open, spilling its juicy blood and exposing the crimson flesh and black pips.

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile.
And spit out the teeth.

Leila was on her third slice when Mom gently smacked her hand away.

"That's enough, sweetheart. You've had plenty of food already.”

Then, she added as an afterthought,” Did you know that if you swallow a watermelon pip, it can do some weird things and even take over your body?"

The image that popped into ten-year-old Leila’s mind was like a scene from a movie she had sneakily watched with her cousin Raymond - a horror called Alien, where a scaly creature laid eggs inside people's bellies, incubated, and burst out of their chests.

She avoided eating watermelon altogether for a while, afraid the same thing might happen to her.

When she was in her teens, entered the age of reason, and decided she wanted to study quantum physics, she realized that her mother's story was just an old wives' tale. But apparently, the ideas our moms inadvertently put into our heads when we are kids tend to come around, and we can’t let them go no matter how hard we try.

Despite her firm knowledge of how things worked in the real world, the fear of the watermelon-induced inter-belly invasion remained in the back of Leila’s mind whenever she ate a slice of that darned fruit. She tried to resort to her understanding of the principles of matter and energy to rationalize her fear. She told herself that the watermelon's juicy sweetness was merely a result of complex chemical reactions and that any notion of it invading her organism was purely irrational. Yet the "but what if…" lingered.

“What if Mom’s cautionary story holds a sinister truth? What if those tiny seeds, once ingested, unleash evil energy within me, slowly but surely devouring me from the inside out?” she thought, promptly forsaking her university training, and putting the rational side of her brain to sleep.

The tray in front of her seemed to mock her, its cold, shiny surface reflecting her growing discomfort. The once-appealing meal, complete with a watermelon rind, now looked repulsive and threatening. She couldn't shake off the feeling that the pip’s electrons had already done a sneaky quantum leap without needing a superconducting electrical circuit and were about to unleash a grotesque transformation within her. The vision of her body transformed into a weird garden of tendrils shooting a blizzard of shimmering photons made her want to cram her fist into her mouth and vomit the offending pips.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are passing a zone of heavy turbulence. The captain has turned on the fasten the seat belt signs. Please remain seated until further notice."

The flight attendant's voice rang urgent, but nothing compared to the panic dancing a roaring fandango in Leila's gut. She had always been a fearless flyer jetting off to conferences around the world, but the announcement sent shivers down her spine this time. As she settled into her seat, the dance macabre made her think that the worst-case scenario was not engine failure, hijacking, or even a crash but a watermelon performing physics-defying tricks in her stomach!

The turbulence was now tossing the aircraft like a can of sardines someone was trying to tip into a bowl. Around her, passengers gripped their armrests while the overhead lockers rattled, threatening to spill the luggage out. Leila was sure the next movement would split the plane open, and the machine and the passengers would rain down like metal and flesh confetti, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass and screams of terror.

Soon, the inevitable would occur - the fruit would release its energy and take up all space. The belt already pinched her waist. She could almost see her stomach swell like it had been pumped full of helium. The buckle would pop off and smack the passenger next to her square in the face, gauging out his eyes. It was as if she’d downed an entire tube of Lax-a-Day. The pressure was unbearable. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer before exploding and dripping blood and tissue all over the aircraft.

It was hard to believe that out of all the weird things that could happen to her, she'd wind up as an involuntary experiment, proving that quantum leaps both in

physics and genetic engineering were not always a welcome step forward. She'd soon become a human incubator for a watermelon!

She squeezed her eyes shut when the violent quaking got harder and harder.

"Miss! Miss!" the flight attendant standing beside her struggled to shake her awake.

"Are you okay? We're experiencing some turbulence, but we'll be through it soon. Just hold on tight and try to stay calm."

And just suddenly, as it had begun, the bloating and the fear of a pip transmuting its energy inside her vanished. She was back in her seat, safely strapped, her flat stomach tucked into her skinny size-8 jeans, the turbulence subsiding.

"I have no idea what I could have named the watermelon infant. Perhaps Dolores… Dolores Beckett, like in the “Quantum Leap” TV series. I can bet it must be excruciatingly painful to give birth to a monster fruit," she chuckled as the loudspeakers spluttered back to life, indicating they were about to land.

Polish by birth, a citizen of the world by choice. First story short-listed for the Irish Independent/Hennessy Awards, Ireland, 1996.  Since she went back to writing fiction in 2020, more than 80 of her stories, flash fiction and non-fiction, have been accepted for publication. She has recently won 1st prize in the  International Human Rights  Arts Movement literary contest.

His Forgotten Memories by James G. Piatt

“Oh, there are moments in men’s mortal years
when for an instant that which has lain beyond our
drenches on a sudden found in things of smallest
compass, and we hold the unbounded shut in one
small space, and worlds within the hollow of our hand...”

Henry Bernard Carpenter

The man watched orange-hued winter leaves
floating in the unsettled wind. It was that
time of year when the leaves, trying fright-
fully to exist, like elderly men like him,
hung desperately to gnarled limbs, or high-
way signs.

In his youth, he breathed the sweet perfumed
fragrance of tender years and wildflowers
and listened to songbirds singing, they being
freed from servile hands of coldness and
discontentment like old men.

But in these wounded hours of another cold
winter, he found himself bound to the sight
of falling stars and the devil’s icy hands that
turned meadows into an icy grayish-white,
like the wings of fallen angels.

His mind contained memories of those
things, of which some speak and others
speak not, and others see, and some see not,
opening up the depths of his loneliness. The
hollow echoing of his lonely mind, which he
alone had to bear, weighed heavily upon the
dark hours and brought him dreams of death.

His withered doubts merged with the
season’s coldness, descending into the
senselessness of the icy season’s mono-logue,
confusing his mind and causing it to dwell
on the melancholy of the cold season.

He saw broken hours filled with forgotten
memories scattered in obscurity, and his
crumpled thoughts failed to recognize the
essence of his reality.

He was lost in murmuring heartbeats and
retched sounds of his withering thoughts,
which those in the public world, and philos-
ophers pretended not to recognize, but it
didn’t matter, not anymore, anyway.

His aging mind was suddenly distracted with
feelings of winter’s sorrows. A raven, shin-
ing in its ebony blackness, had no address,
due to the darkness of the night. It flew
away, leaving even darker thoughts in the wind,
and his mind.

Cold fears crawled across his mind, search-
ing for places that contained warm memo-
ries. All the small unimportant things in his
life reverberated inside his brain, causing an
eerie melancholy. Then, an image of an
abandoned cemetery emerged in his mind,
and he saw his name etched on the broken
face of a tombstone. He saw a ghost atop his
tombstone dancing on his forgotten memo-
ries, and he wept.

James, a retired professor and octogenarian, lives in Santa Ynez, California, USA, with his wife Sandy and a super-intelligent Aussie dog named Scout. He has had five collections of poetry published: The Silent Pond, Ancient Rhythms, LIGHT, Solace Between the Lines, and Serenity, and over 1825 individual poems, 40 short stories, and five novels in scores of national and international literary publications. He earned his doctorate from BYU and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He was nominated twice for the Best of The Net award and four times for the Pushcart award. 

Butterfly by Sarah Agagu

Once upon a dream, I knew four boys.
Night after night, dreaming and promises of the future,
The world could not disobey. Drawing our own universe,
as we said it, so it was. Amen!

Laughing across tarred paths and crumbling shades,
walking with the swagger of the greats and sure.
Knowledge was our weapon, success our inevitable inheritance.
Five dreams, one comet disguised as star.

House visits in penthouse, drivers of speed cars and economy,
Truthful commands; World domination; Our mortality overcome;
Eternal dreams and glorious future; Taste of wine and fame and glitter;
Forever written on the sands of time. Till death.

The truth shall remain, only four could be gods.
Untransformed mortal; Petty grudges torn asunder.
I wasn’t meant to be; Cry and watch four caterpillars unfold.
Once upon a dream, I was going to be a butterfly.

Only the halls and winds remember, five dreamers held court
that dark night of 2016 May. Four boys; four stars.
One girl, woman after all. Once upon a dream:
Starry eyed; hopes filled; forever young; golden butterfly.

Sarah Agagu is a Nigerian story teller and freelance writer. Her works have graced the pages of the Ink Wellness publication and her short story ‘A Girl Called Florence’ can be found on Amazon. As a freelance writer, she specializes in crafting high-quality SEO content for wellness brands. She is also a law graduate, proud Swiftie and a Wattpad addict. Connect with her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter (@SarahAgagu) for updates and stories on her latest musings and ideas.

You by Isabella Early

If I were to show it, you’d think I was blind
But you’d never tell me, for you are too kind
I’ll publish my work and I’ll cringe with fear
Only to discover we share the same mind

Days will pass by before I will hear
How pleasant you are when you’re with your peers
I’ll brush off these comments and go on with my day
But I achingly admire you, and that fact is clear

The next time I see you, I’ll be sure to pray
For a smile or nod, or even a “hey!”
You will return the favor, and I’ll see it as my “prize”
I shove it aside, the way I lead myself astray

I love you, I adore you, I relish in your eyes
My devotion to you is endless, like the stars in the skies
Her mention of your name has me pacing the floor
She should’ve known better, any other lover dies

Isabella is an undergraduate student who lives in Hagerstown, Maryland. Currently, she has no professional experience with writing. She is an emerging writer currently attending Hagerstown Community College.

Daniel’s Eggs by Jonathan Lacher

I love my brother. I really do. But I would be remiss in my duties as an older brother if I did not make a reasonable effort to embarrass him as publicly as possible. I could tell the story of the time he accidentally fell out of a tree while trying to jump from one branch to another (he claims he wasn’t). I could tell the story of the time he accidentally broke his arm while trying to impress his girlfriend (he claims he wasn’t). Instead, I will tell the story of the time he accidentally made scrambled eggs while trying to make brownies (he offers no defense).

Many dessert recipes involve mixing butter into the dough, and brownies especially almost always require it. To do this, people with the foresight to plan ahead know to leave some sticks of butter out to warm up to room temperature. Room-temperature butter becomes soft enough to mix with other ingredients. However, my brother is not especially known for his patience. His timeline between deciding he wanted brownies and actually making brownies was measured in minutes, not hours. My brother turned to a technique common among those of us who have a desire to cook something but lack the foresight to plan ahead. He stuck the butter in the microwave to melt it.

Normally, this works perfectly fine; The butter becomes partially melted and whatever is left becomes soft enough to stir into the rest of the ingredients. However, the laws of physics say that this process is dependent on what temperature the butter starts at and how much energy is added to the butter. Not enough energy and the core of the butter will still be too firm. In such a situation, the butter can simply be put back in the microwave for a bit longer.

My brother did not think to check the butter. He saw that the butter was starting to melt and thought that it would be good enough. I don’t know if he started with colder butter than normal or if he set the microwave to less time than normal. But, regardless of the reason, his butter was still too firm. Unfortunately, in his craving-driven haste, he did not pause before adding his next ingredient: eggs.

My brother did his best to try and beat the eggs and butter together, but quickly found he was no match for slightly chilly lipids. So, he did what he always did when the butter was too firm. He stuck it back in the microwave. What he forgot about was that he was already trying to mix eggs into the butter. A few moments later, he had his lightly warmer butter and proceeded to continue mixing it into the eggs.

It was at this point that my brother realized he had screwed up. The brief trip in a microwave was enough to cook the eggs. As he tried to beat them together, instead of a liquid mixture he got flakes of cooked egg tossed with butter. It was actually pretty decent scrambled eggs. Nice and fluffy with a firmly buttery flavor, if a bit light on spices. But, a far cry from the brownies he intended.

I should offer a defense of my brother by saying he is a perfectly competent home cook; Not only can he feed himself, but he often contributes delicious dishes to family gatherings. He took to making some brownies without thinking because he had done it before and they came out fine. But anyone who spends enough time in the kitchen will eventually have a few embarrassing mistakes. And, to my brother’s misfortune, I was close enough to witness this event. So, he was unable to hide it like many of my own kitchen mistakes have been hidden.

Jonathan is an environmental scientist who enjoys dabbling in literature.  He has published a poetry book titled Through the Ages and maintains a website of some of his works at Crayshack.com.  He has also been previously published in BittersweetZ-Sky, and Plants & Poetry.

(Avoiding) Conversations with My Room by Sulayman Saye

i allowed myself to latch on
to the cobwebs
at the corners of the room.
i felt them, string after string, break from under me
like they knew my pain but couldn’t carry it too long.

as they came crashing down,
i swirled in the monotone verse of the ceiling fan
and became its mockingbird.
together we composed a tune
that could cast a restless monkey into the spell of meditation.
inseparable from the background.

i wasn’t even a fly on the wall
but a chameleon.
when i became too visible
i’d fold into the pages of books
on the desk
and become their words;
begging not to be read.

i pulled at the frisks of my hair to even them out
only finding that I made my scalp bleed.
i soaked and dissolved into my own sweat
evaporating into nothingness.

i put a cloak over my shame
and held my breath
praying that i wouldn’t exude any form of life
whenever the room talked about you.

Sulayman Saye is a Gambian writer (and poet?). He works as a screenwriter for Studio 71, a production company based in The Gambia. His work has been published in Kalahari Review.

Glimpse by Jonathan Diloy

My first memory is my mother singing.

I do not remember the title of what she was singing except that it was a simple melody of a love song from my mother’s childhood. I remember it being about a lovely girl telling her lover to look at her and take heart for she will love him all the days of her life.

It is funny that this song should be playing in my head as I lay here dying.

The gently falling autumn rain was doing an awful job of washing away the blood from my face. I cannot move my hands to wipe it off and it keeps getting into my eyes. Honestly, it is getting annoying.

I seem to no longer have any feeling in my legs. Something must have gone wrong with my spine. I imagine it is like an appliance plug getting pulled out of a wall socket, except the appliance happens to be my legs. I have seen this on TV many times. Maybe I should try to wiggle my toes.

Hmm. How can you tell you are wiggling your toes if you cannot feel them?

I can still hear my mother’s song, but now it is interspersed with the voice of the OnStar operator asking me if I am okay.

I did not know the OnStar thing still works.

The operator sounded young but professional. She is asking me about my condition. I wanted to tell her I was broken, wet, and getting blood all over my brother’s favorite sweater that I borrowed without his permission.

Of course, I did not actually say that to her. I cannot move my jaw.

She has called 911 and first responders are on the way. She says I should just hang on and they will arrive soon. Sure, I have nothing better to do.

The operator is staying on the line, talking to me, trying to keep my attention.

My mother’s song has played in a loop about five times now.

The OnStar girl is still jabbering on. She sounds like she is getting worried about me. She is doing her best to sound professional and not break out into a sobbing mess. She must be new to this. Bless your heart, lady. And, sorry for being your first... this.

My thoughts are starting to swim. Memories float to the surface. Buoyant bubbles rising to pop before my eyes.

That was how I met her: my darling girl. At the beach.

I was swimming along with my head under the water and not paying attention to where I was going when I bumped into her, burping out bubbles in surprise. I poked my eyes out of the water, the human approximation of a hippo.

The ginger girl in front of me was lanky and tall for a 13-year-old. She looked down at me with her freckled face and said: “Watch it, Bub!”

I was in love. I was 13 years old and for the first time in my life, I was in love. No. No. Not just in love... I was enamored, enchanted, and captivated. I was dumbstruck, lightning struck, and all other kinds of struck. I felt like 20,000 volts was racing through my veins.

Je suis amoureux! I was in love in French, and I did not even know HOW to speak French!

She was wearing a little polka dot biki... no, it was blue. No, a powder blue dress! She said it once belonged to her mom. Her mom wore it to her winter formal. She got it resized for her.

She asked me what I thought. I said... I am on my way. I will be there when you need me the most. I will be there for you... it is never easy to lose a loved one. I lost my mother a few years ago.

I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be fine, but... my jaw would not move.

I hear sirens getting closer. The rain still has not let up. Roads can get awfully slippery in this weather.

My mother’s song is still playing in my head, background music to scenes in my life. They go together well.

I see the first responder come up to me, give me a head-to-toe assessment and say: “Don’t worry, son, we got you. Don’t move.”

Yes, sir, I mentally answered him. I can definitely not move.

The EMT folks work fast and professionally. I have never seen such skills. The TV shows I watched have nothing on these people!

You guys deserve a medal. Several medals! But you all probably have more than a few already. I’ll just treat you all to burgers and fries. Even cheesy fries! Sky’s the limit!

Suddenly, the music in my head stopped. I could not hear the sirens or what the EMTs were saying. The rain got quiet. All sounds stopped.

I am standing. When did I...?

I turn around.

“Oh! Hi, Mom!”

Jonathan Diloy is a military veteran and full-time psychology student with a raging reading habit. He was a Navy Seabee and has worked for the US State Department, the White House Military Office, the National Institutes of Health, and Amazon. He has been to every continent except Australia and Antarcica. He attends Hagerstown Community College in Maryland. His experiences as a service member, global traveler, student, and husband to a wonderfully demanding woman have bestowed him with stories from the small moments of everyday life to the fantastical machinations of the imagination.