They Were Her Rock

“You can do this!” “Be positive.” “You’re not alone.”

An assortment of rocks made up the flowerbed in front of a tall brick building. Some were scattered, others piled, many with painted pictures and handwritten messages.

Walking from the parking lot was perilous at best. Cheryl navigated the uneven sidewalk cautiously, crunching ice under heavy boots, pounding stale snow into powder.

The front glass-door opened. Volunteers greeted at the end of the entrance foyer away from the cold drafts of the outdoors. Someone sat at the reception counter awaiting questions.

Cheryl’s heart raced. Her radiation treatment was about to begin.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

The March Waters

The stillness of the air weighed heavily on the landscape. The lake, melted during the false summer, was paved over again.

Every kid in the neighborhood was under strict orders to stay off the ice. After the first melt happens, you can't trust its solidity.

The best part about even the mildest of late winter storms is that school shuts down but parents still have to work. By 10AM all the boys, and a few of the girls, had started an epic hockey game.

That night, they all bristled at the injustice of their punishment. After all, they'd been right.

Ice Pond

When I stepped outside onto the cold snow-covered sidewalk, I remembered my childhood in Maine.

“Hurry, Artie!” My sister, Clara, bellowed from across the ice pond.

My friend Eric couldn’t keep up, and I quickly sped past him, my hands raised in victory. Eric sighed and skated away, having had enough.

Clara clapped and then glided toward me. Suddenly there was a crackling sound and a scream. Clara fell through the ice, hands flailing, eyes fearful. I tried to get to her, but people pulled me back and said I’d fall too. Then there was silence.

I never skated again.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

A Boy I Knew

A boy I knew killed a man. Lost his mind. Shaved his head. His face on the news was an open-mouthed scream, soundless. His eyes so round, searching. I whispered to the screen: please blink. I said it like ice in his mouth, like the way he’d look up at stars puncturing the still night sky, the cold air, too many angles of his body pushing out, knees and elbows and chin. I said it without hope. When this boy was mine, he danced and wide-smiled and kissed and laughed. His voice rang out, ethereal, hit the earth like rain.

From Guest Contributor Beth Mead

Dreams In Green

Standing here on this frigid night, I look out over a frozen landscape, and I can't help but wonder why?. There is still hope. Maybe one day, this land will come back to life, the trees will grow, the water will flow, and the air will smell fresh and clean.

I can still feel the excitement coursing through me, the sense of wonder at seeing something so beautiful. The land of ice and snow holds a strange sort of magic.

But the land is not dead. It's only sleeping, waiting for inspiration or something green to grow the days away.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Indignation

The kid just ran out. I was only doing twenty-five in a twenty zone. You’re allowed some slack. He magically appeared from behind a van. I didn’t put the ice there that caused me to skid. I didn’t put a school gate by the main road. I wasn’t the one teaching road safety and I didn’t call myself on the phone, talking garbage. Yet I stand accused.

A hundred times his face turns toward me in slow motion, eyes widening, then everything becomes rapid, the exploding noise and flying glass.

Was no one responsible for a traffic patrol? So unfair.

From Guest Contributor Duncan Bourne

Winter's End

Sounds of breaking ice awaken her mind as she settles back down upon the thawing earth, with its cracks and pops as faults move forward at increasing speeds revealing hibernating secrets.

Inspiring streams, reverting from their crystalline form, fish returning from the spirit world greeted by crimson grass and creeping Phlox in efflorescence.

Rain continuously taunts her from all directions. She watches an ascending pale moon in its most majestic of phases. With welcoming pulsations, feeling her heart stir once again as its frozen arteries struggle to kick off winter's cold embrace.

The heat she now feels comes from within.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Magnolia

Pink Patsy’s throne was her porch, where she roosted like a proud poodle through the better part of a century. She was all pretty pastry and puffball in oodles of swaddled satins and mega bijoux, with cloudward curls as epic as her jewels. Her communal vat of ice cubes and iced tea was legendary among heat-struck fieldhands and thirsty children alike: there was more gin than lemon or sugar, and we fished out ice with silver tongs that looked like chicken feet. They said she kept a tiny pearl pistol in her pom-pom mules, and she only used it once.From Guest Contributor Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette is a widely published writer of flash fiction and prose poetry, with recent appearances in Tiny Molecules, The Citron Review, Ghost Parachute, Dillydoun Review, and more. She is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal of literature inspired by visual art.

Fire And Ice

“He took me for ten grand. Hustled me when I wasn’t in my right mind,” Demar mentioned. The waitress turned back, having forgotten a glass of water.

“So what’s happening to him now?” Jim asked.

“He’s losing everything. Never got a job. Had a streak of bad luck. Getting divorced.”

Looking at the water, Jim noticed it was mostly ice. “Well, that’s great. He deserved those things.”

“I knew this day would come. I didn’t know I’d feel sorry for him.” The water arrived. Demar took a sip, and the coldness of the ice sent a shiver down his spine.

From Guest Contributor Steve Colori

Abiding

I stir the White Russian, the clink of ice so soft, tender. I should be grading papers and concentrating on how to explain Rasputin and Nicholas II to my students. I just want to abide in White Russians and ice, a creamy sea.

I take a sip, savor cream-filled sensation. Hold onto it. Too many rules, kiss department chair’s ass. Don’t swear. Be responsible like Professor Gebert. Voices rise, like some discordant chorus.

I take another sip.

How rich I feel, world subordinated to ice-filled buzz.

I take another small sip, trying to keep creamy seas from melting.

I’m losing.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His story, "Soon," was nominated for a Pushcart. Yash’s stories are forthcoming or have been published in Café Lit, Mad Swirl, 50 Word Stories, and Ariel Chart, among others.