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Arden had spent most of her twenty-seven years navigating life in grayscale. Her choices were practical, her actions measured, her world unadorned. In her teens, she had been a promising art student, but her mother’s illness consumed the family’s energy and finances, leaving her brushes untouched. Now she worked as a bookkeeper, days reduced to neat columns of numbers. She liked the precision, the way everything lined up. Yet sometimes, her pencil would stray, sketching soft arcs in the margins of her ledger—small, thoughtless shapes that she erased quickly, each time surprised by the tug of what she’d left behind….

The shoebox was worn at the corners, more heavily than Peggy remembered. The removal men had found it when they’d reluctantly searched the attic. Her fingers traced the fraying twine, trembling against its familiar texture. She lingered for a moment, then murmured, “The letters.” “What’s in it, Mum?” Diane stood by the window, her arms crossed against the answer she already knew. Peggy loosened the knot with care, the twine fraying at its edges. “Letters from my George, from his Army days. He’s still writing to me, you know,” she said, her tone peaceful but distant. “He always finds a…

The subway car hummed through the dark tunnel, fluorescent lights flickering in uneven rhythms. Lina shifted her weight, fingers curled around the handrail. A melodic chime played over the speakers. Around her, bodies swayed with the train’s motion, phones cradled close, books tilted just so, eyes carefully lowered in the familiar dance of strangers. She exhaled slowly, pressing her heel into the floor. Another late night. Another ride home. Her eyes drifted to the route map, following the colored lines downward—until they met his. He sat near the door, a scarf draped loosely at his neck, one hand resting on…

Matthew parked where the road gave way to gravel, the hills rising sharply on either side. The air was cooler here, carrying the earthy scent of grass and damp stone. He lingered in the stillness, his eyes on the much-folded Ordnance Survey map resting on the passenger seat. The map was worn at the edges, creases softened and threatening to tear. The penciled loops, the faded names—it had been with him and Carol on every ride that summer. He unfolded it now, letting the familiar names spin out before him. Castleton. Edale. Hope. In the corner, her handwriting sprawled untidy…

Darkness held Seren—not like an embrace, but like forgetting. Each breath (or was she breathing?) scattered like dust in a vast nothing. Time moved around her—or through her—leaving only the faintest trace of what had been. Before the garden, before the forgetting, there was a hospital room. The beeping of a monitor, slow and steady. Fingers tightening—then slipping—from hers. A name—hers—spoken with urgency. Then, silence. A sensation flickered—a thread slipping loose, delicate and uncertain. Fragments surfaced: a voice calling her name, the sharp scent of antiseptic, the weight of absence pressing in. She reached for them—or thought she did—but her…

When a friend posts the following message on Facebook, what is one to do? Sooo, I got an Amazon package last night. But I didn’t order anything.It is absolutly addressed to me.Inside?A package of tube socks and a large bag of 100 condoms.My first thought was, maybe someone is playing a joke on me?Second thought, maybe this belongs to my ex husband…Or the universe is trying to tell me something?? But what?! As you may have guessed, my response was to write a short story! Delivered by the Universe Marnie found the package on her doorstep, unmarked except for her…

My dad never really talked much about his childhood. He was the oldest of five children, and as a baby, his family moved to the newly-established mining village of Ollerton in Nottinghamshire, which is located on the edge of Sherwood Forest. I never met either of my paternal grandparents, or any of my dad’s siblings. My understanding, from the few times that my dad opened up about his early life, was that his dad had been a hard drinking womanizer, prone to bouts of the blue devils, which is a Derbyshire idiom for low spirits and depression. During those times,…

This is another old poem, newly rediscovered and reworked. The third verse really makes me think about life’s trajectory for so many people, and how quickly you can reach that inflection point, where opportunities go from being boundless to being constrained and reduced.