Tag: love

flash fiction by Nov 6, 202111:56 am

The Big Empty by Nick Olson

The body didn’t matter anymore, so it wasn’t much. Some meat. Loose skin over hard bone. A splaying of nerves, biological wires that were always ever misfiring anymore, sciatica, numbness, pain throughout the day. The body was dying, and he needed a way out of it.

There was a jackport in the city, couple models to choose from, but no power to get it running again since the collapse. All the tech in the world and nothing to see it back to life. June had always liked this city, so thoughts of her kept him company as he walked the empty streets most nights, dodging sinkholes, collapsed bridges, ancient stalled traffic to get into another store, scavenge parts, look for food for this damned body.

Fiction by Oct 1, 20219:19 am

Undying Love by Kip Knott

I suppose the last straw was when I asked Ophelia to lay on the floor so I could trace her body to make sure the coffin would cradle her perfectly.

My father was a carpenter, and his father before him, and Jesus before that. From the time I could hold a saw and heft a hammer, I had been able to make anything out of wood. I thought of myself as a kind of alchemist who could turn a piece of knotty pine into cash with nothing more than a few simple tools and some linseed oil.

Fiction by Sep 4, 202111:15 am

Tesla and the Pigeon by Ryan Davies

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them, for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird – pure white with light grey tips on her wings. She was different. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.

I was always too afraid to marry. An inventor should have a wife, they told me, but they didn’t understand that I was already married to my work. I could never be worthy enough for a woman, who were superior to me in every single way. My heroes, Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant also never married and their genius was a testament to that. My chastity was the key to my own scientific abilities, but as I near the end of my life, I sometimes doubt if the sacrifice was worth it.

Poetry by Aug 7, 20211:00 pm

Weighted Blanket by Grace Hui

You understand worlds I do not, pull them
into words I cannot, but it is more than your brilliance
I love—
it is how you wrapped me tight, a weighted blanket
when I was spiralling, spiralling,
spiralling so dizzy I was heaving,
spinning out of control, my molecules
colliding
when you held me tight,
and made sure I was fine in the morning.

Poetry by Jun 5, 202111:51 am

Uninvited Onions by Hermione Cameron

I am embarrassed by my dissection of the sandwich. My fingers pick away at it, clumsily pulling apart the various parts, like some inexpert surgeon.

Why did they have to put onions in it? Is nothing sacred?

Outside the window someone who looks a bit like someone I know walks by.

I continue my open-heart sandwich surgery, easing open the bread skeleton, pulling apart the strands of cheesy yellow flesh, prodding around the tomato red blood cells.

Poetry by Feb 6, 202111:06 am

Love is Like a Ferris Wheel by John Tustin

Love is like a Ferris Wheel.
You go around and around
And at the same time up
And then down.
It can get monotonous
So better to have interesting company.

Fiction by Jan 2, 202112:02 pm

Love is Hard by Michael Chin

Music teaches us that love can be a lot of things. Love is a battlefield. Love is all around. Love is what I got. Love is my religion. Love is hard—but I’m getting ahead of myself.

In 2007, Rob Sheffield published a book called Love Is A Mixtape and it was the worst. It’s not that the writing was bad or the story was tough to understand, but he appropriated a concept we all knew to be true and used it in the most dismal way imaginable. Love is a mixtape, all careful ordering and appropriating other people’s words and dissonant chords to make your own Frankenstein monster of kissing-in-thunderstorms and racing-through-airports and sex-in-dimly-lit-rooms. Even truer, a mixtape is love. It’s assembling the most personal collage of sound in the world, distilling the feelings from your head into some semblance of order so they can communicate a coherent idea, and maybe even a conception of love.

Fiction by Jan 2, 202112:02 pm

Bullet by Lina Carr

When the police call, you know it failed. You were the one to call, the one to cry, to scream, beg them to come. You’ve rehearsed the shock in the tone of your voice, exercised face muscles to sculpt a perfect panic expression. She told you the words you should use, what not to say; she told you what the police would be asking about. Instead, the detective tells you to rush.

Fingers curled around the steering wheel tremble when you navigate through the evening streets of New York. You should be rushing but you drive slow. Tonight you’re grateful for jammed intersections, streets packed with pedestrians, red traffic lights. They impose on you the time you need to think and you’ll use them as an excuse that it took you so long. Tonight, they work in your favour.

Fiction by Jan 2, 202112:00 pm

The Lep by Pat J. Mullan

People think nurses get a special calling, like nuns’ or priests’ vocations. That wasn’t the case with me. After five years at boarding school in the convent, I knew I didn’t want to be a nun. I didn’t make the grade for teacher training college like my older sister, and I didn’t like the thought of working in a bank or at a desk in the civil service. There wasn’t much else for a girl to do in the late sixties, was there? I mean, I was never going to the factory. God no. Being a factory girl’d be even worse than being a nun. My mother would never have lived that down.