Memories

 

                                                By lisa lahey

After Clarice fell over the stairs, she broke her neck and lay still. Stubborn as ever, she refused to die. Her laboured breathing filled the foyer, and I stood over her, shaking my head. I would have laughed if it wasn’t so sad.

“Really, old girl? That’s how you chose to go?”

 

She’d been upstairs in the nursery, checking on Hannah again. What was the point? Clarice knew the stairs were dangerous. The arthritis had gotten worse, and her gait was unsteady. The doctor told her to stay on the bottom floor. The woman never listened to sense, or maybe she was just tired now.

 

I left her lying on the floor and entered the living room, looking at the array of family photos on the fireplace mantel. From black and white to dazzling colour, they told a story of fifty years together. A slender brunette in a wedding dress gazed at the camera as I stood with my hair slicked back, beaming proudly beside her. I was lucky. She settled.

The years passed. Clarice beamed at me, her eyes sparkling while holding our tiny newborn, Hannah. Hannah had breathing problems, and she went straight from Clarice’s womb into an incubator. Clarice sat with her every day until we got the all-clear and brought our girl home.

 

Four years later, Clarice looked at the camera, holding our newborn son Jamie. She was weary, her eyes shadowed, tears glistening in the corners. I was the photographer. I didn’t like having my picture taken anymore. I felt exposed.

 

Despite this, Clarice insisted I pose for one last picture, holding my grandchild, another girl named Laurel. My eyes were misty with tears as I tried to keep it together for the camera.

 

My eyes filled up now. What’s the point to all this suffering? I hadn’t figured it out. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions.

Clarice’s breathing became quieter, shallower.

“Hurry up already, old girl,” I muttered.

Clarice liked to tell me I was an impatient old goat. It was true but I hated hearing it. She’s not saying it now, but she would have if she could.

 

I heard the baby cry and raced upstairs to the nursery. The pale pink carpet was plush, and the room was as quiet as a wake. Hannah beamed at me in her crib, her tiny feet kicking in the air, her fingers in her mouth. My heart pounded as I picked her up and her head lolled back. She stopped breathing and her eyes rolled up inside her head. Did I do this? I never stopped wondering. A sheer curtain swept the memory away again. 

 

From downstairs I heard a moan, and I went to Clarice’s side. She lifted her hand to me, and I took it, steadying her as she rose.

“Took you long enough,” I kissed the top of her head.

Her face, with its wrinkles and crows’ feet, was mesmerizing.

“You’re as impatient as ever,” she pressed her hand against my face.

She looked at her crumpled body lying in repose at the bottom of the stairs.

“Did I trip?”

“You did.”

“Not a very dignified way to go,” she frowned. “Stop grinning.”

“Beats crying,” I whisper. “At least it wasn’t my fault this time.”

“Let it go, sweetheart.”

“I’m trying.”

 

We walked together from the house to a place without memories, a place I knew she would love.

About The Author: Lisa Lahey is an Associate Acquisitions Editor for After Dinner Conversation Magazine. Her short stories and poems have been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Spaceports and Spidersilk, Ariel Chart, Altered Reality Magazine, Why Vandalism? Suddenly, and Without Warning, Five on the Fifth, and she will be published in upcoming issues of Epater Magazine, Patreon Magazine, Viva Poetica, Bindweed Anthologies, and Spadina Literary Review. More details about the author can be found here:

The Owl

 

                               By George Kalandadze

The hooting owl ne’er scared me,

midst the blackness of sylvan night.

But so more she had prepared me,

veiled lore in sands of time foreseen.

-- Eyes of amber immured in light.

 

Wind -- her confidant, in hushed tone,

my notice happened to ensnare.

She resembled all, yet no one,

branches bending, beneath her lun.

Yet, misplaced, I wandered still, there.

 

Her head, a cosmic carousel,

an omnipotent balance wheel.

Each hoot, an echoed hoary bell.

Mistral’s replies through bluebells swell,

Night hummed, a beehive, -- surreal.

 

That instant, yonder on the limb,

sat other owl, ready to speak.

The wind, now sacred seraphim,

my equal in ancestral dream.

In silence, we beheld mystique.

About the author: George Kalandadze is an author of poetry and fiction. He has a degree in liberal arts from St. John's College and lives in Tbilisi, Georgia. George was published multiple times by St. John's College writing and art publications, "The Gadfly" and "Energeia". In his spare time, he pursues photography and mountaineering. More details can be found here: 

Looking For Dog

 

                                    By Matthew Spence

 

Jason was worried when Dog went missing one late Friday afternoon. Dog had gone off roaming before, but it wasn’t like him to be gone so late after dinner time. Even so, his parents weren’t all that concerned at first.

 

     “He’ll come home when he’s ready, and not before,” Dad said.

     “Try not to worry,” Mom added. “If he’s not home by tomorrow morning, we’ll go out and look for him.”

 

Jason nodded, feeling relieved as he ate his dinner and looked out through the patio door, waiting for Dog to come home. He’d come when he was hungry enough, Jason thought, sometimes with a neighbor who’d been kind enough to bring him home. Dog liked people, but that was part of the problem, and one of the reasons why Jason tried not to let Dog out of his sight too often.

 

Jason waited, and when he went to bed that night he lay awake in bed and looked out at the moon through his bedroom window, hoping for Dog’s safe return.

    

The next morning, Dog still hadn’t come home yet. Jason and his parents went out looking for him as they had promised to do. It was a Saturday, so most of their neighbors were home, but none of them had seen Dog. Jason thanked them and kept looking, from the edge of the woods that stood outside their neighborhood to the local supermarket parking lot where some lost dogs wound up, but there was no trace of Dog anywhere.

    

By the end of the weekend Jason was really worried. Dog was nearly ten years old, and had been with them since Jason was five. “What if he’s found somebody that he likes better than us?” Jason asked.

    

“He’ll come back,” Dad insisted. “Don’t worry. Dog has always found his way home before…”

    

The days passed. It was late summer, and the feeling of fall was already in the air. Jason’s parents put ads in the local paper, and on their Facebook pages, asking if anyone had seen Dog. As the days turned into weeks, Jason became increasingly frustrated, but still hoped for Dog’s return. He started a new grade in school, and sort of drifted through his classes, still thinking about Dog. As the seasons turned, Jason kept track of how long Dog had been gone, as the trees turned bare and winter approached. Halloween came, and Thanksgiving and Christmas, but without Dog they didn’t seem to have as much meaning. By the time winter had begun to pass, Jason really began to wonder if Dog had indeed found a new home, somewhere halfway across the country. The idea made him depressed, and more withdrawn as time passed.

    
School came and went, and more seasons as Jason got older. He went into Junior High, then high school, but by then his grades were suffering to the point where he was falling behind. He had to be put in remedial classes, and started trying “small” amounts of pot, pills, and booze. When he was seventeen he found himself on the streets, dividing his time between various shelters and hustling for drug money. Even so, Jason would still sometimes look for Dog in the old places he knew, even asking some of his old neighbors, although by then some of them had moved away as his old neighborhood began to decline. His parents found him at one of the shelters and were able to get Jason into rehab, where he was able to focus his attention. Jason was able to get a part-time job, then an internship as he completed his GED. He never stopped thinking about Dog, though, even though he knew by then that Dog had was probably gone, having lived out his natural lifespan…

    

More years passed. Jason now had a house of his own, and a patient, understanding wife. They had two kids of their own together, a boy and a girl, and the boy reminded Jason much of himself, to the point where his wife suggested getting him a pet.

    

“We should wait,” Jason said. “Maybe he’ll find one on his own. One that got lost…”

 …And might have been trying to find his way home, he said to himself.

About the author: Matthew Spence was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His work has most recently appeared in Tabi's Flash Tuesdays. More details of the author can be found here: 

Tahawus (Cloud Splitter)

 

                                            By Dave Nash

Our separation spreads out,

our row sleeps over,

the threads of our argument tear off and turn up everywhere.

Pain won’t leave, it finds a room in me.

 

Rain drenches the mountain,

the cloud splitter, rainmaker mountain

inhabitable, inaccessible.

 

An offshoot blows across my face.

How something so felt could become an artifact

 

I won’t accept.

We lived in the space between lightning and thunder

that struck me     miles of infinity.

 

Our younger selves would be terrified blind.

Our knowing selves would let it pass detached.

 

But we were pulled by the updraft,

heat turned to fuel for the storm,

we rose a thunderhead.

Until we burst.

 

Oblivion,

this space that we fell into.

Apart,

 

moving towards the forest of

gusty moods on autumn nights.

The peak and fall.

 

I wanted resolution

to find it on the mountain

or absorb it like unrelenting rain,

but I had to go.

About the author: Dave Nash writes on Northeast Regional trains. Dave is the Nonfiction Editor at Five South Magazine. His work appears in places like South Florida Poetry Journal, Bulb Culture Collective, Jake, and The Hooghly Review. You can follow him @davenashlit1.

Another Chance (A Lyric)

 

Let’s make another chance

To get back to the life

We left behind

In a trail abandoned

For taming the wild;

In the trail

Of our dormant dreams

For a life easily beguiled.

 

Let’s turn again

Our Dreaming on

And tune to the

Loving country song.

I wanna ride my soul

Back to the childhood days

By the green meadows

And the hillside lake

…………………….

I wanna bathe again

In the melting rays

Of winging dreams

In the dancing rains….

 

I wanna run again

Along the fluting wind,

Putting off my boots

Behind the devil’s bend,

Shedding all my loads

Along the autumn’s end….

 

I wanna chase the blue

At the end of green

I wanna feel again

The maddening teen

With the kissing dews

In a breaking dawn,

With the wild flowers

Of an unmowed lawn…

 

Let’s turn again

Our Dreaming on

And tune to the

Loving country song.

I wanna ride my soul

Back to the childhood days

By the green meadows

And the hillside lake

…………………….

I wanna bathe again

In the melting rays

Of childish dreams

In the dancing rains….

 

The world is not

What it seems to be;

The dreams are not

How they’re meant to me…

I’m falling on and on

With time heavy on me;

I’m falling on and on

In a troubled sea…

 

I wanna be lost again

In the wilderness;

I wanna feel again

All that meaninglessness

In floating time

With the flowing Moon

Or chasing the breeze

In a summer noon

With all that carelessness….

 

Let’s turn again

Our Dreaming on

And tune to the

Loving country song.

I wanna ride my soul

Back to the childhood days

By the green meadows

And the hillside lake

…………………….

I wanna bathe again

In the melting rays

Of childish dreams

In the dancing rains….

 

© Atique R.

Please Mind the Gap between the Train and the Platform

                                                           By Charlie Dixon 

Cold concrete seeps through denim,

worms its way in, and settles in the centre of your chest.

It beats with the barbarous chit-chat of heinous daydreams

written across the walls of bathroom cubicles.

 

There’s a girl with a guitar on the corner.

She’s singing Nirvana in time with

the sound of an approaching train.

I wonder about other lifetimes.

 

Could we have been friends, once?

 

The music fades out as the doors close behind us.

 

Then, four more stops on the Northern line.

We’re in an entirely different world from the last.

 

It’s that easy.

 

The city doesn’t sleep with the sky,

but Embankment, notably quieter in the evening.

The air moves a little more freely

in the dusted glow of a streetlight.

 

London’s pretty when the sun sets right.

A showcase of its own artistry reflected

in the eyes of a stranger, or a storefront window.

The skyline paints the pavement red,

flows through the spaces between rusted metal bars

in ribbons of orange and pink.

 

The leaves are beginning to change...

About the Author: Charlie Dixon is a queer writer from the north of England. Having recently completed an MA in creative writing, she is branching out into the industry with the primary aim of understanding, and of being understood.

Us Two Poets

 

                                                        By Claudia Wysocky

I stand before you now. . .

We are two poets. . .

Will you let me be?

Will you accept my world as it is?

I've only just wished for a second chance. . .

Everything I want for myself. . .

I've been too scared to dream. . .

—My world has been too tame.

I will open my eyes and feel you here. . .

—I will learn to love what I see.

I can no longer see

'cept in your mirror.

You're my darkness and my light

—and I don't mind.

Your hands are cold—your voice is tempered steel

—But these things I don't mind.

I can no longer feel

'cept in your arms,

You are my life and my death

—as I slowly die,

I will believe in what you see.

So speak words into the earth…

With the light of a kiss between us.

Claudia Wysocky, a Polish writer and poet based in New York, is known for her diverse literary creations, including fiction and poetry. Her poems, such as "Stargazing Love" and "Heaven and Hell," reflect her ability to capture the beauty of life through rich descriptions. Besides poetry, she authored "All Up in Smoke," published by "Anxiety Press." With over five years of writing experience, Claudia's work has been featured in local newspapers, magazines, and even literary journals like WordCityLit and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.