Coffee?

Coffee? I asked.

Totally, you replied.

When I offered an invitation, you always accepted. You never extended one yourself.

Was this friendship a one-way mirror, a one-way road, a one-note song?

Over several years, I pondered what it signified. If a friendship is only one-sided, is it a friendship at all?

I waited. I didn’t hear from you. Months.

Lunch? I asked.

Can’t wait, you answered.

More months later.

Dinner?

Tomorrow? Your text read.

Your company was always innocuous, comforting in a way. Reliably benign.

I never messaged you again. After nineteen years, that was the last time we spoke.

From Guest Contributor Justene Musin

Leviathan

April worked the shop counter, gritting through the arthritis and the insinuations, hoping her obsolete wedding ring would ward off anything worse. Her smile was too often seen as an invitation, but her popularity with the customers meant her paycheck was one less thing she had to fret over. Plus she got free repairs.

In winter, when she was locking up after dark, she noticed the shadows piled up in the corners of the lot despite the reflected fluorescence. Something was out there waiting for her, waiting for her to be buried under debt and trauma, waiting to consume her.

Cafe Shi

I had just gotten an invitation to a special meal at Cafe Shi. For those who do not know it. Look it up. Best readers, writers, thinkers in the multiverse, a place to eat and listen to stories that would make your hair curl.

I got there as a Mandela effect meeting was finishing up. Those poor souls all crying about the coming thermonuclear war and what to do about it.

I listened as a lady I knew from a prior life spoke about Colorado radiation levels and burning sulfur rain.

Seemed rather odd a thermonuclear war would end humanity.

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

Memorials

Through the fog and overgrowth that chokes the front yard, an eruption of tulips grows on either side of the doorway, an invitation to visitors that stopped visiting decades ago. They are the only splash of color on the otherwise gray facade of the crumpling structure that used to be a house.

Tulips once required cold weather to survive. Somehow these plants learned to adapt, and are now in flower nearly year round. A stark contrast to the failure of civilization all around them. Were anyone still alive who could understand, there's a metaphor to be found in those plants.

Book Launch

“Congratulations,” I said. “I’ve been following your development.”

The honored author uttered an inquisitive “Oh.”

“I mean, as an author,” I clarified.

A young twenty-something giggled placing a copy of the new novel between us. She begged for a signature. I turned around to mingle with others.

“Wait, I would like to talk with you,” the author insisted. “You look familiar. Have we met before?”

“Nice line,” I responded.

“I admit, not original. But say...”

“We met an hour ago.” I smiled. “You’re the new next door tenant at Argyle Road. You handed me an invitation to this event. Remember?”From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She resides in Edmonton, Canada with her husband and stuffed animals.