Category: Fiction
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This Goes On and On
By Dan Crawley ~ I can distinguish each one by their walker sounds. My mother’s walker makes a steady clacking, a locomotive’s leisurely journey. And there I wait, say, in the kitchen, as if on a platform anticipating her arrival. I coax and cheer her on, hugging her when she finally reaches me. My father’s…
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Signing Off
by Doug Jacquier ~ The kettle in the fridge. Calling everybody ‘darling’. Copying the young women’s craze for ash-blond streaks in her hair. Sending money to the man in Africa that she’d met on a dating site.
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Lana Gets Some Sleep
by Veronica Montes ~ They speak in whispers across the tiny, still form of Lana’s mother. “You have to reposition her every two hours—even through the night,” the hospice nurse cautions, “or the wounds will get worse.”
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Father’s Day
by Chris Cottom ~ I was ten minutes early but Dad was waiting on the bench in his tiny front garden. ‘I’ve been enjoying the sunshine,’ he said, as if I’d never twigged that his true joy was punctuality. After brushing a non-existent speck from his cavalry twills, he pushed down on his walking-stick to…
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Three Microfictions
by Nancy Ludmerer ~ I drive to the shelter in Clifton where I’ve heard via Petfinder about a cat needing a home. Morris (same name as Dad) is a gleaming stately beauty (orange, white-pawed), a solitary alpha male. King of the hill, they call him. His nose is raw from rubbing against the bars. My…
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Silver and Shadow, Spruce and Pine
by Maria Haskins ~ When Grandmother disappears from the nursing home, Marika is the only one who understands what’s happened. The family and staff, they wonder how and why a 96-year-old woman could walk out of her room unnoticed and disappear in the middle of the night. They whisper about dementia and Alzheimer’s. They make…
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Pebbles
by Sudha Balagopal ~ When Seeta’s phone rings in the United States with the message of Amma’s decline, she leaves for India carrying an assortment of useless things in her suitcase and a cluster of pebbles in her throat.
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My Kuleana
by Melissa Llanes Brownlee ~ “Grandpa wea you stay?” I open the door to his room but he isn’t there. Mom is going to give me dirty lickins if I don’t find him quick. “Grandpa! Mom said you gotta come take a shower right now.” I close the door and walk down the stairs to…
ONE WILD RIDE 