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…breathe deeply and often…

Tag: fiction

  • Garden Luncheon

    Margaret took off her gardening gloves and surveyed her garden. The flowers were perfect. Never had her blooms been bigger or brighter than they were this summer. She took out her phone to take a picture. The blues, oranges, and reds were just phenomenal. She picked a blue one and…

  • Janet and Miranda Have Lunch

    Artist unknown. “Everything on this menu must have at least ten thousand calories,” Miranda said as she picked up her Chardonnay. Janet thought by the looks of her, she could use ten thousand calories. She could get a salad or a steak anywhere. But they were in an exquisite Indian…

  • Climbing the Rope

    Image generated with AI. Emmy fumed. She’d been struggling to climb that rope for three weeks and still hadn’t made it two feet off the ground. Her face was red, her hands burned, her thighs chafed. She headed to the dreaded locker room to change, so she could hear more…

  • In the Midnight Hour

    In the midnight hour, when no one else is around or listening, the story I tell myself is that I didn’t fall off the turnip train yesterday. That the voice of Linda Ronstadt still rings true in my heart and head. I’m still the woman I was forty years ago…

  • Rainbow Tornado

    Photographer unknown “Look up there, Frank, what is that?” asked Bessie. “Is it the end of times?” “O shit, Bessie, it ain’t the end of times, that’s a rainbow tornado. The old people said those things were good luck. Instead of sucking everything up, it’s raining down good energy.” “You…

  • Solace

    Image generated with AI. In the old stories, when life went sideways, the princess had to go to the haunted forest to find the oracle. Diane thought she might as well give it a shot. It was a hundred degrees outside. The creek was ankle deep, the shade dappled and…

  • Promise and Truth

    Image generated with AI Alice Krudworthy gave up on lying a long time ago. She quit making up shit, but would often omit certain details to bend the thinking of whomever she was talking to. “What did you have for dinner?” Someone would ask innocuously.  “Salad, with apples, chickpeas, avocados,…

  • Fall, Flail, or Fly?

    Photo by Tasha Marie To be or not to be.  fall, flail, or fly? Ribs tight and hard, stomach in knots.  I don’t even see the setting sun, there are no colors left in the grey of dusk.  The ocean laps and pounds the jutting rock on which I stand. …

  • Word Wednesday: Whalesong from “chord, note, Baltic, crowd, bronze, odor”

    AI generated image. “I never thought I’d be standing on the deck of a cruise ship in the middle of the Baltic sea listening to whale songs, The notes and chords from their throats are stuff I only dreamed about,” Madeline watched the fog move over the waves.  The famous…

  • Mary Comforts Eve

    “Girl, shit happens. You can’t tell me it doesn’t. Sometimes our choices are part of the grand scheme of the universe. A tale told by someone else. But you’re not the bad guy of the story, you’re free now,” said Mary. Eve sobbed with guilt and grief. The snake around…

  • Public Communications

    “I absolutely know what you want me to say,” said Thomas. He’d been with Celia all day and all evening. They’d worked all day together, been to the bar after work to celebrate with the public communications team, and now they were headed home. They were at the crossroads. “I…

  • The Voice

    “Hugh Henry you have the ability to choke the living shit out of every situation like an intergalactic missile,” His mother told him straight up. She was tired of listening to his tirade about why the symphony shouldn’t play next Sunday. He thought it was too frivolous, way too frivolous,…

  • Everlastingly

    “Everlastingly,” Janet hissed the word out as long as she could to give it the onomatopoeia sound of the crashing waves she needed to hear. “Listen! The mighty being is awake and doth with his eternal motion make a sound like thunder, everlastingly.” Janet quoted Wordsworth when she crossed the…

  • Whitewater

    So they threw them together into the stream and the two splashes they made were as one. They tossed the rings into the maelstrom of the churning rapidsTheir perfect union ended as it had begun, blessed and honored.Washed downstream in holy water,Their wedding rings lost in the turbulence on the…