The Mona Lisa

Mona was known for her smile, but really, what was so great about it? Just a slice of smile, nothing big and welcoming. Not a smile with a future in it, more of a flirtatious glance than anything else.

Mary Lee had a big welcoming smile. It had greeted legions of men. It was a smile that had launched many ships, one that let men know that she was available and ready for marriage. Perhaps that had been part of her problem. Men wanted what they couldn’t have. They preferred having their hearts broken over settling down to someone real.

From Guest Contributor Eliza Mimski

Confessions

Did she hear right?

The curtains are parted. It is naked black in the bedroom except for a slice of light exposing one hazel eye, the outline of his angular face. Clare knows how soft that eye-brow is to touch and how it is to be in the centre of that dark gaze.

Moving to the window, she peers outside: they will never be two names chiselled into a hill, hewn into rock. For months she wished she was that whisper of sunlight on his face. That and no more.

‘I’m married,’ Mike repeats.

‘I heard you. So am I.’

From Guest Contributor Louise Worthington

Thankful

I smell the turkey as my father carves each slice delicately. Mymother’s homemade mashed potatoes steaming, the butter melting down ontomy dish, makes my mouth water.

We can’t touch our food until the turkey is on the dish and theThanksgiving prayer has been said.

My younger brother squirms in his seat waiting to shovel stuffing intohis mouth.

“Okay, the turkey is carved,” my father says and clasps his handstogether and begins the prayer.

It’s not the food I realize that makes me happy. It’s the facessurrounding me at this table that I’m thankful for.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The Artist

I was smitten with her, and the pretty photos she mailed me.

I told her I'd plunder her supple body; that I imagined her rolling, like liquid, beneath me.She loved when I said her moans would ricochet off every surface of her lovely bedroom, glazing it in sinfulness.

I told her everything she wanted to hear.

Anticipating our first meeting, I created a collage of her photos: my vision of our tryst.

I savored each slice of my scissors as I dismembered her perfect limbs, her naïve, breathtaking head, rearranging each fragment of her like a scrambled jigsaw puzzle.From Guest Contributor L. Michelle Corp