Space Dew

By Neil Clark

When you were in space, you told me the thing you missed most about Earth was the morning dew.

I spent the next decade threading our garden with a thousand webs, tall and broad as the house. I became an expert in 3D light displays. Rigged them so they’d catch the droplets perfectly.

On your first night back, you were quiet, like you were worried your words hadn’t adjusted to gravity.

You slept for eighteen hours and when you woke up at dawn, you went to the middle of the lawn and wept about how you already missed the stars.

         
“I write to surprise myself.” – the author

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Bus Stop

By John L. Malone

It’s a sunny day, a Sunday, I think.
It will be good to see the grandchildren.
I go down to the bus stop.
My friend is there,
You been waiting long? I say.
Yes, she says. It’s like waiting for Godot. Do you think it will come soon?
Of course, I say. It’s a bus stop.
We wait and wait.
The sun slides down the deepening blue sky.
Hunger gnaws at me.
I try to remember why I came here.
A young man strides up to us wearing a white uniform.
Come on you two. Dinner’s almost ready.

          
John Malone has settled in his new home and is relishing writing again.

When You See Me Walk

By Nayana Nair

When you see me walk toward my grief,
toward my past,
with my head sinking down,
with my hands full of my own pieces,
stop me dear.
Come to me.
Run to me.
Call out to me
even when you think I cannot hear.
Hold me back
even when you think I cannot be stopped.
Promise me
that you will try.

           
Nayana is an engineer and technical writer who also moonlights as an amateur poet. She says, “Writing for me is a process of self realization and an effort to understand what is ever-elusive.”

Lonely Photographer

By Bello Olabisi

Those that say weddings are only stressful for the bride have never been photographers at my sister’s wedding. Relatives call you from every direction to capture their precious moments on film. Guests scream at you to include them in the pictures even though they have no emotional tie to my family. That isn’t the worst part to me. What truly hurts me and stresses my heart beyond its limit is knowing that with every smile, every tear, every memory I capture with the snap of the camera, future generations will never see, never know, the lonely brother behind the camera.

           
“I write because it is one of my ways of giving back to the society. It is really comforting knowing that someone out there understands your experience and pain. It makes you feel less alone.” – the author

My Father

By Dianne Moritz

My father was not
a strong man,
so I’ve heard.
He boozed,
caroused
with woman,
Mother said,
words rattling
like pebbles
in my toy maraca,
till I wanted
to scream my ears off.

One summer day,
he grabbed
his billfold
and left us …
Smooth as stone.

          
Dianne Moritz, seeks understanding of her troubled relationship with her mother. She writes poetry and picture books for children since retiring from teaching in inner city Los Angeles.

Darkness

By G. Allen Wilbanks

“Why are you afraid of the dark? Darkness is the natural state of everything. It’s the light that’s unnatural. When God said, ‘Let there be light,’ he was imposing an artificial reality on a universe that had previously only know known total darkness and emptiness, and every force in nature is currently trying to drive us back to that original point of neutrality. Everything around us is temporary, and at some point in the future we will all return to that initial state of nothingness. It’s inevitable.”

“Maybe,” his wife admitted. “But, I still want you to replace the lightbulb.”

           
G. Allen Wilbanks is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and has published over 60 short stories in Deep Magic, Daily Science Fiction, The Talisman, and other venues. He has published two story collections, and the novel, When Darkness Comes.

Partners

By S.B. Borgersen

Partners were compulsory at primary school: for nature walks, for P.E., and to return to class after playtime.

Partners were picked, most popular first, until there was very little choice left. I, with my missing front teeth and my old black plimsolls, was always a straggler. So were you.

Fifty years later we are still partners. We had so many other things in common.

           
S.B. Borgersen writes because she just cannot help it, she also knits socks, and walks her smashing dogs on the south shore of Nova Scotia. She is a member of The Nova Scotia Writers’ Federation, Writers Abroad, a founding member of The Liverpool Literary Society, and she judged the Atlantic Writing Competition (Poetry) 2016 and Hysteria (Poetry) 2017.