Tag: short story
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Patches
By Terri Clifton Patches was born with his smile stitched on, if that is what you call being stuffed and stood upright. And even if his smile hadn’t been so carefully sewn, he couldn’t have helped having it upon seeing the sparkling eyes of the child, her curly head hanging over him as he was…
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Waiting to Bloom
By Crystal James As a prepubescent teen, I imagined blooming like a flower by eighteen. On that day, I’d be declared a woman, and I feel differently about my appearance. Whenever I felt down on myself, I imagined this version of myself in a coming-of-age tale. It was a full-blown fantasy starring a boy from…
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Someone Else’s Turn
By Erica Lee Smith It’s not eavesdropping if other people’s words find their way to you when you’re just minding your own business. At least that’s what she tells herself, as she stands by the open window above the kitchen sink, inhaling the fragrance of day lilies that she had cut earlier that morning and…
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To Love a Body
CW: Sexual situations, birth trauma, some discussion of disordered eating and diet By Julia Nusbaum Now In the half dark of my bedroom, I dig for the leggings and sweatshirt I discarded last night. This is my uniform now, leggings that haven’t been laundered in a week and a shirt with spills and stains I…
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O, Fortuna
By Paige Wyatt Forty wouldn’t exactly call herself lucky. As she took a sip from her cocktail at the casino bar, she thought about how hard she’d worked to get here. It had taken her a year to save for this vacation with her girls. She’d volunteered for extra shifts at the diner, and she…
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Desert Oasis
By Kaitlynn McShea March, 1955 The small town was tucked away into the rolling desert landscape. Dirt storms were more common than rain showers, and water was a more valued possession than gold. That’s what the three hundred residents had been told for generations, at least. The gold rush had come to their doorstep and…
Kaitlynn McShea
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A Lion’s Love
By Kaitlynn McShea When Laura Henderson was eleven, her father came home with a lion. It was a California summer day, and blistering, stunning heat filtered through the front door. Laura remembered it being out of character for him: he never came in through the front door, he never came home before nine, and he…
Kaitlynn McShea
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A Stroll Through the Fruit and Veg Section
By Carys Crossen The week the pregnancy test displayed two blue lines Elise’s baby was the size of a sesame seed. Two weeks later, it was the size of a blueberry, according to the pregnancy website she had started checking compulsively. Another fortnight later and it had the same dimensions as a grape. Elise wondered…
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Abandoned
By A.P. Joye January 3rd, 2001 “Name?” The lady raised her eyebrows. “Lilith Jones.” “There you are.” She announced from behind her desk; the icons on the monitor reflected in her eyes. After signing Lilith in, the lady assured her that it’d only be a moment. Lilith nodded rather than to fill the quiet, sterile…
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Kicks
By Fabiana Elisa Martínez He did not want her to move or to say anything although he knew she would, sooner rather than later. The light from a single lamp in the foreign room was made of copper and yellow tourmaline. The flashes of the far away highway could not disturb them so high in…
Heartland Society of Women Writers 