Hospital Song

They need to run more tests but Dad pleads, "I want to go home." This man who built houses can't stand by himself to pee.

I sit two hours with him daily, passing my sisters or brother in the hall on either end of the visit. We touch hands, squeeze.

A curled little old man under layers of cabinet-warmed blankets, he's shaking, all ice-blue eyes and Viking-white beard under sunken cheeks.

Television is election chaos. No help there. I realize what's on my iPad, close his door, crank its volume: Dad and Bob Dylan, gravel-throated friends, a hospital bed duet.

From Guest Contributor Tjorven

Imperfect

Some say handwriting is an art form. Practice makes perfect, the preschool teacher said. If it were true, I would have the handwriting of an exquisite 14-point Arial. Instead, my wastebasket overflows with paper balls of failure. Black smudges across my skin like dried blood from the words I’ve killed with imperfection. Sweat seeps over pores as I seethe at my incompetence. When the flawless blue lines of loose leaf repulse me, I succumb to technology. Every keystroke delivers proportional consistency, yielding blissful pride as my fingers connect. Only then am I free from the curse of my obsessive mind.

Laura Widener

Laura is a wife, mother, and coffee addict living in rural Georgia. She holds degrees in Sociology and Human Services, and completed her MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University. Her forthcoming work will be found in Riding Light and NoiseMedium, and her previous work can be found in TWJ Magazine, Morpheus Tales, and Life in 10 Minutes. Visit her blog at: http://incessantpen.wordpress.com

Speak Now

Matt got the news in time to break up the wedding. Did people actually do that, he wondered, or did that only happen in the movies? Speak now or forever hold your peace. Matt couldn’t remember ever having heard that line spoken at any of the many weddings he’d been to.

Against his heart’s desires, Matt decided to sit the wedding out. Who was he to stand in the way of Carla’s happiness? Instead of attending, he returned to the site of their first date and sat quietly as a piece of the world moved on with his silent assent.

From Guest Contributor Dan Slaten

Winter

I peered suspiciously beyond the chipped lacquer of the oaken balcony. I had seen this before. The wind was coming.

Somehow, this place had now become my opus. I mean to say of course that it had supplanted my imagination. The verdurous landscape below appeared at times surreal; dioramic. And yet, at almost the same moment, conscious; alive to the rhythmic pulsations of the earth. Living in the trees was an idyllic stillness; in the air, an inscrutable entropy.

Soon, without warning, the wind would be be upon us, and a pervasive cold would grip the house for many days.

From Guest Contributor L.S. Worthy

Lifeline

Things had been bad: misfortune compounding until he just couldn’t face going home. He’d stopped the car near a wooded area; pulled a handgun out of the glove compartment; and started walking, not even bothering to lock up.

Struggling through ground cover, not worrying about the poison ivy, Billy eventually happened upon a path. He followed it, wanting to ensure he was out of earshot, lest he somehow fluff it and be saved.

The revelation of his resolution brought him to a halt and heightened his senses. The colours of the foliage throbbed like an LSD trip, contrarily grounding him.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Go Lightly

Between classes, Hollie and I liked to sneak over to the coffee shop across the road. The trouble was, it was a busy intersection with no crossing points; what a relic! So imagine how frightened I was when she just took off into the busy traffic. Between the perils of angry horns and fast-paced steel she somehow made it to the other side.

Being more sensible, I waited until it was quieter. Then I sprinted over eyes shut and caught up to her.

“It's ok,” she said as I caught my breath, “they are not allowed to run you over.”

From Guest Contributor George Aitch

Staking A Claim

It started with his touch and before that the way he looked at me; clear blue eyes that knew how to take me in, how to see through my quiet, my fear. We explored city streets that summer, always attached, love-linked. A goodnight kiss turned couch tumble—hungry hands searching, lips and teeth crashing, his weight pinning me down. And then that surprise on the back of my neck: sweat, tears so sweet. Surrender, yes, maybe even love; but later, and better, trust and understanding, an intimacy that allowed regrets to be shared, my darkness to escape, a homestead staked.

From Guest Contributor Holiday Goldfarb

Holiday is currently enrolled in the MFA Program in Writing at Lindenwood University, Saint Louis, MO. If all goes as planned, she will graduate in December 2016.

Feeling Blue

Blue is a breeze blowing wisps of hair across my cheek. Red is juice running down my chin as I bite a sun-ripened strawberry. Green, the scent of freshly cut grass, blades rippling and tickling the soles of my feet. Purple is the fading warmth of a summer’s evening. White, a smooth window pane on an icy winter morning.

I feel these things because I was born deaf, and my vision melted away soon after. I sometimes imagine fleeting specks of color from my first glimpses of life, but those memories exist only in the moments between sleep and waking.

From Guest Contributor Megan Cassidy

Megan is an author and English professor currently teaching at Schenectady County Community College. Her first young adult novel, Always, Jessie will be published by Saguaro Books this spring. Megan's other work has been featured in Pilcrow & Dagger, Wordhaus, and Gilded Serpent Magazine. For free excerpts and deleted scenes of Megan's work, check out her website or follow her on Twitter

Bringing Back The Dead

She gasped as he removed the scarf from his face.

"Don't be afraid my love, I'm here," he whimpered, choking back tears, "see me, see me for all that I am."

Silence. Gut-wrenching silence.

Anguished, she bowed her head. With one deep breath she finally let him go. "The man I loved is not in this room, I do not see him before me."

"You wear his face but he is not you, you are not he." She turned to the door, her lip quivered, her voice shook as she softly uttered their final exchange, "Goodbye darling, you're free now."

From Guest Contributor Jodi S. Ivers

Anechoic, Deprived

I once thought I heard my father listening to Santana on our back patio. He never listened to music. The only soundtrack to his workaday life was the eight cylinders rumbling at his foot’s command. A kick drum reverberating in his chest that echoed his life. A violent explosion shrouded by modernity, reduced to a drone. I eased through the sliding glass door and found him staring at the beyond the lower pasture in silence. “Be still,” he said. His words hung thick in the mid-summer air. I still don’t know if I wanted the music for him or myself.

From Guest Contributor J. Andrew Goss