Snow

The town plow thunders by with its single headlight. You listen with your eyes squeezed shut, imagining the snow that touches everything—sliding under your mudroom door—powder dusting the floor. You’re warm, curled up in an igloo of quilts; yet, your nose feels cold. You know the woodstove burned out after the late news—only a lingering scent of smoke drifts up the backstairs. You wake, uncertain of the hour’s shade of blue, and look up at the white ceiling where a teensy black speck of a spider scales a silver thread, finding its way in this uncompromising dark.

M.J. Iuppa

The Tiny Box

Rosa watched the Christmas lights flickering on the house across the street. Green, red, blue and white, gleaming through her window. She took a sip of tea and let the warmth settle in her stomach.

Under the Christmas tree sat a tiny box from Steve, neatly wrapped in gold paper and a red bow.

A year had passed since Steve’s death and Rosa wouldn’t open the box without him.

Deep inside she knew what would be in the box, but truly knowing would break her heart.

Every year Rosa continued putting the box under the tree and never opened it.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Spring Cleaning

Winter surrendered. Riverbanks croaked a single splash with each muddied footstep. Wild Sweet William's dainty lavender flower mingled lush green leaves and twisting vines of yellow-hued buttercups and scarlet sumac. Scraps of ocean blue ribbon and coral-colored yarn frantically entwined weaving sticks and leaves, nesting six brown-speckled eggs. Wild turkeys gathered strutting rowed corn fields. Beneath the refuge of centenarian pine fawns struggle against tottering wobbled legs. Snapping turtles lazily sit side by side sunning on downed oak logs across the trickling eddy. A deluded hummingbird, hoodwinked by an empty bird feeder, tells me to get busy.

From Guest Contributor Christy Schuld

The Lake Of Shadow

The traveler had spent his entire day trekking through the woods until he came upon a lake. As blue as the sky this lake was; he could see his reflection as if it was a genuine copy of himself looking into his own eyes.

He decided that he would take a swim in this beautiful lake that seemed to hold mysterious shadows in the depths below the translucent blue glow. It was a refreshing feeling as he entered the lake. But after only minutes, did the mystical glow engulf his consciousness, and his body sank into the shadowy depths below.

From Guest Contributor Gabe Mancino

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

Discovery

The light was dim and in the blue to purple spectrum, but he could barely keep his hands from shaking. There between trembling fingers, was the first synthetic bioluminescent bulb.

He thought he heard a creak in the darkness. The deeper shadows of conspiracy theories crossed his field of vision like eye-floaters: fears that some capitalist cadre would send black ops to assassinate him and ‘disappear’ his research. Beads of sweat chilled along his spine.

Then he noticed a reddish glow from one of the beakers on the bench: one containing a slightly different formula. The scientist chased the child.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

Blue Girl

There once was a girl and she was blue. Everything she saw, thought, and felt was blue. She thought of pink, green and purple, but no luck. Everything was still blue. She thought of how much better things would be in a different color; brighter, warmer, easier. She kept thinking she should change, so that the blue would disappear. She would imagine vibrant turquoise and even bright whites. Then one day she took the plunge. She followed the light; the hope. She walked as far as she could walk. Then she floated. Now things are red. So very, very red.

From Guest Contributor Maureen Ferguson

Only For A Moment

Astronaut Eric Shaffer sighed as he looked out the window. Venus was rapidly receding away, its surface invisible beneath the yellowish cloud layer that gave it that distinctive color. How he longed to see the blue of Earth again.

Four months earlier, Apollo V had left Earth. Months spent traveling for this: a six-hour flyby at thousands of miles distance. It was the closest he'd ever get to another world.

Shaffer gave a sad smile. It was time for the long journey home. A journey taken for nothing but a short glimpse. Yet, he decided, it was worth it.

From Guest Contributor Matthew Kresal

Moon Swallows Head of Barking Dog

A young girl and her father sit on a bench and stare into the lake. They are stuck this way forever. From here on out, they must focus unblinking on the way it does not ripple, how no stone may enter and how no fish can leave. Across the park, a squirrel clings to a tree, his heart always exploding, a white dog snapping at his tail. The water reflects the moon and calls down the night, pocked with clouds-- the sky split in two, half of it black, half of it blue; there is no color where they merge.

From Guest Contributor, Jeremy S. Griffin