Don’t Do It

I tried to warn him. Several times. Maybe that was the problem.

“Listen to your buddy. She’s not the one for you.”

Instead, he hauled butt down the aisle. All I saw was the dimpled boy from our youth slipping away, oblivious of the cliff ahead.

It gets worse. Under the chuppah, our hero someway somehow managed to screw up his only freaking duty: stomping the bejesus out of a glass goblet — missed it by that much.

‘Twas a harbinger of things that came.

He hasn’t spoken to me in years.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have said I told you so.

From Guest Contributor David Thow

Wasted Youth

"Youth is wasted on the young."

"Agreed. All young people want to do is have fun, go on adventures, play sports, work out, join social clubs, have sex, see the world, fall in love, attack the status quo, learn new skills, create art, make friends, get high, topple the oligarchy, save the world from self-destruction, dance the night away, see how fast they can go, push boundaries, eat at all the cool places, risk life and limb, and trip the light fantastic.

"That sounds nice, but the reality is mostly posting to social media and binge watching Friends."

"Point taken."

I Overhear My Grandmother In A Dream

I knew about the tarpaper roof torn in the shape of the mountains she had just left, the shape of her youth spent in birthing a dozen children. I did not know she sang only to the sons, who arrived looking like wrinkled old men. When I asked her why she wouldn’t sing to her daughters, I already knew the answer: the girls would just leave her for strangers.

I saved my voice for prayer. The light flinched under the lie, but it was only my shadow. That light came from some distance, she said. You really shouldn’t impede it.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl is a classically trained pianist who writes by ear. Author of several collections of poetry, she has also written a series of novels called Bombay Trilogy; and been published in hundreds of literary journals and anthologies, including a Best of the Net. Look her up on Facebook.

Berries

An unpleasant task of my youth was picking raspberries in our backyard. Raspberries are the least tasty of Oregon’s big three, the others being blackberries and strawberries. Raspberries are also soft, easily squashed and have unpleasant texture. At times I imagined cutting the roots as a way to avoid picking them. Blackberries and marionberries (a kind of blackberry) are pleasures that can be picked while standing up and grow wild, so one need not grow them yourself or pay for u-pick. Oregon strawberries are the best tasting strawberries, but they must be bought or paid for by back breaking u-pick.

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley

The Short-Lived Joys Of Youth

When I married at eighteen,a friend gave us The Joy of Cooking.My husband, nineteen, turned every page,looked at every recipe, writing, “Yes!” “Try!”or (for his mother’s recipes) “No!”Never thinking of actually cooking something himself.I wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or flattered,but the marriage lasted about a year.

When I married at fifty-one,we compared copies of The Joy of Cooking.My husband’s was in better repair,so we gave mine to Goodwill.He likes cooking, so he does it. I wash the dishes.It’s been nine years now. We are still married.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl L. Caesar

Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.

Dear New York

Your 9 a.m. is my six. Once again, you didn’t leave a message. I was asleep, and not dreaming of my youth. Or Bobby Short at the Carlyle, Yul Brynner as the King. The Oak Room, their scotch so expensive I almost gave it up. Since I’m awake now, I’ve begun my day. Doing the wash. Starting breakfast. Wondering what it is you want. Why not cast me aside as just another woman who headed west when the buildings fell? Here, the mountains are tall, the sea, a pebble’s throw away. I know it’s you, New York. Calling me home.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

Linda's stories and poems have appeared in Outlook Springs, A Story in 100 Words, What Rough Beast, the New Verse News, Misfit Magazine, and others.

This Message Cannot Be Delivered

Old friends’ emails become inactive, enveloped by electronic monsters. My message cannot be delivered, electronic gatekeepers proclaim.

I can’t tell them of being alone. I can’t hear their off-color jokes about paraplegics and suicide, youth at its most delightfully stupid. Tell them of empty, sterile walls. I can’t confess I absorbed their stories of family, an electronic voyeur.

I keep trying. Messages come back.

I drive to distant homes. But staring through lit windows, I feel like a magazine, an obnoxious knickknack among order and precision. I imagine them discarding jokes, smiles replaced by starched replicas.

This message isn’t delivered.

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 work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.

The Postscript

It was boiling mid-September, Freshman Gym, 30 kids in blue and white trying not to faint, two bees hounding us, Mrs. Jenkins scowling at our clumsy volleyball.

Since then, Brian’s been in and out of marriages, has a kid he’s ok with not seeing often, multiple jobs, half-bald, half-brown wisps, slow, ineffectual, chunky.

But in that gym, Brian was a long-haired demon god, always moving, lean and all instinct, feasting on shiftless opponents and becoming the postscript to everything I would ever write about my youth, not always the point or the signature, but an afterthought never to be ignored.

From Guest Contributor Steve Bogdaniec

The Clock Tower

The clock tower, situated in the center of the town square, afforded views of the entire valley. No shadow could hide from its rapacious stare.

Townspeople went about their business quietly, all eyes on the ground, hoping to avoid unwanted attention.

Rebecca and Victor met in the churchyard green. They'd yearned for each other since youth, but had never managed to share even kiss. Now might be that moment.

Time stopped. The entire town froze.

When the clock resumed, Rebecca and Victor, despite being certifiably sober, returned to their homes after once again awakening from a stupor under mysterious circumstance.

Youth

We pelt through the underbrush, giddy and squealing, following a trail too small for adult passage. Fronds of yellow broom lash our way with petals; it is early spring and the mud has only freshly set beneath our footfalls. The wooden knuckles of roots provide easy grapple holds for our pudgy hands, and we push on undaunted.

"Where are you?" he calls, breathless from behind me.

"Here! I'm up, follow my voice!" I guide him and we emerge, hand in hand, into the clearing.

Noble and patient, our grandfather's oak tree welcomes us. A bird's nest awaits as our reward.

From Guest Contributor Violetta Buono

London-based introvert Violetta Buono (@ViolettaBuono on Twitter) lives in a fantasy land of her own making. She graduated in Classical Studies, and is currently a freelance writer. Between writing poetry, flash fiction, and pretending to work on a novel, she sometimes submits her work but has yet to be published. This is her first piece appearing to the public.