The Sunflower

V’s sitting on the sidewalk in the sun, headphones and cut-offs, and she smiles at you, cigarette in one hand and a big paintbrush in the other, dripping yellow.

“It’s a warning,” you say.

She lifts it to the door of the sky blue bug and pulls out petals, stretching glorious to the handle, the wheel well, and the broken mirror from a perfect oval of shiny black seeds with a tiny white dot on each one and a ladybug the size of your fist right where he took the baseball bat to it.

“No,” she says. “It’s a flower.”

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook Bhagat’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, Little India, Rat's Ass Review, Lotus-Eater Magazine, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, teaches creative writing at a community college, and is writing a novel. Her poetry collection, Only Flying, is due out Nov. 16, 2021 from Unsolicited Press. See more at www.brook-bhagat.com or reach her on Twitter at @BrookBhagat.

Shifting The Blame

When Jackie found the caterpillar crawling in her front lawn, it precipitated a world war. The war began with nuclear warheads dropped on several strategic locations, including Jackie's house. She and her parents were killed instantly, without understanding her role in the sudden collapse of human civilization.

Jackie's family lived near a top-secret military installation that was critical to the nation's defense. That caterpillar was a nanobot from an enemy state. When Jackie picked it up, thinking it was an actual bug, the remote handlers panicked.

That did not stop the world for cursing Jackie as it slipped into oblivion.