♥️

Thank you for reading and sharing, Lucinda! 💙

Thank you! 💙

💙

💙

Jacqueline Doyle ~ Three Flash Fictions - New World Writing Quarterly Maisie Fails to Anticipate the Ordinary As her body began to break down, first one joint at a time—knees, hips, shoulders, then the discs in her spine, then

"He might turn out to be a young Sartre to my Beauvoir.”

“(I care more about people’s lives than their philosophies.)”

& the maybes

I Still Don’t Care About Hegel + 2 by @jacqdoyle.bsky.social in @newworldwriting.bsky.social newworldwriting.net/jacqueline-d...

“With trembling hands, she lights a thin cigarette, taking a long pull, filling her lungs, inhaling deeper than she usually would, but her mind’s in a place it’s not been before.”

@suzannehicks.bsky.social in Twisted Tongue Press twistedtonguepress.com/fiction/atom...

“We’re friends you say we’re
knives sometimes making the little hurt
noise loners make”

@bidoofaloof.bsky.social in Twisted Tongue Press twistedtonguepress.com/issue-2/essa...

“The tornado is sexy, sultry, a slut.”

@skyskkyy.bsky.social in @fracturedlit.bsky.social fracturedlit.com/she-sucks/

“Always I passed away, quickly, unnamed.”

“Then one day I am born and I do not die.”

@lynnmundell.bsky.social in @fracturedlit.bsky.social fracturedlit.com/again/

“They will say, ‘You’ll see,’ with these sly, knowing smiles, as if planning a surprise for my birthday. And that is when I will start to follow them …”

@ruthjoffre.bsky.social in @fracturedlit.bsky.social fracturedlit.com/one-of-the-l...

Two Epilogues

“… a man with a subterranean smile who in many ways felt like an echo of the old guy.”

—

“In Spring a man appeared on Jane’s front porch like a sunray selling glow-in-the-dark dog collars.”

@megpokrass.bsky.social in @bendinggenres.bsky.social bendinggenres.com/two-epilogues/

Puppy

“… & he says all they can do is take take take & he says there’s already nothing left for the rest of us: no unions, no jobs, no land & he says everything they touch turns to beige & …”

@aniking.bsky.social in @bendinggenres.bsky.social bendinggenres.com/puppy/

Ellipses are for People Who Can’t Handle Circles and Need More Time to Process the Terrible Miracle that is Life

“But this small town is haunted by a past none of its inhabitants dare speak of, just like the one a little further down the road, and the one a little after that.”

@hughbehmsteinberg.bsky.social in @bendinggenres.bsky.social bendinggenres.com/ellipses-are...

Mallory

“I felt my insides go numb and cold. Did she just want a short break? Or was she leaving me forever?”

@swethaamit.bsky.social in @bendinggenres.bsky.social bendinggenres.com/mallory/

“Your hand, a zebra against the setting sun and the venetians, stampeding as always.”

@pleomorphic2.bsky.social in @gooseberrypielit.bsky.social gooseberry-pie.com/game-night/

What You Can't Bury - Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine by Karen Crawford A faded photograph on a sunny beach–the first time you met your brother, a paternity test confirming what your father didn’t want to know, you in your twenties, your brother almost e...

“A last supper–your father’s kitchen smelling like home, your brother and his girlfriend watching the tram cross the East River, the New York City skyline sprinkling to life."

“... why didn’t you pick up?”

@karenc.bsky.social in @gooseberrypielit.bsky.social gooseberry-pie.com/what-you-can...

“… I cradle Eunice in my arms and explain to her how wrong I was, how she was always my favorite chicken, how this world demands hard things …”

@emilyrinkema.bsky.social in @gooseberrypielit.bsky.social gooseberry-pie.com/eunice-bobs-...

♥️

“…I’d watch my mother’s face light up with every expert note, as she transformed into a stranger, a woman I’d never met, donning dresses I’d never seen her wear, her hair fixed like an actress…”

Strangers + 1 by @jekwriter.bsky.social in @gooseberrypielit.bsky.social gooseberry-pie.com/strangers-2/

“Would you render me in multi-color angles like Dora who said none of your depictions were her or cast me in bronze like Esmeralda, your she-goat muse?”

She-Goat Muse After Guernica by Pablo Picasso + 2 by @lucindakempe.bsky.social in @gooseberrypielit.bsky.social gooseberry-pie.com/she-goat-muse/

You Were Just Here — Weird Horror Magazine

“I thought of our mom falling through the air. The world suddenly so slow, as if I could run and catch her if I was fast enough, if I was big enough to hold her up.”

@pintsncupcakes.bsky.social in @undertow.bsky.social www.weirdhorrormagazine.com/you-were-jus...

"... all she would have done to keep her children safe and alive, all she'd tried to do, all she'd given up, yet how blind she'd been, how weak and scared her version of love had been in the face of the world and its whispering voices."

Frog Heart by @joybaglio.bsky.social @ikeproject.bsky.social

"If you carve the words in sadness,
know them like the ink you bury,
like the veins that rise to the occasion."

Undoing: The Book of Being Here by @jenlrouse.bsky.social in The Constant Hum of Elsewhere, published by Harbor Editions @smallharborpub.bsky.social (congrats, Jen! ♥️)

"...they see the lights. Blinking and twinkling, carousel spinning, Ferris wheel turning and the sound of music crisp and clear as a bell. Calling them. He's been warned all his life about the carnival but maybe, just maybe..."

In the Desert by @barbarabyar.bsky.social @cowboyjamboree.bsky.social

Sarah! ❤️❤️❤️!

Patricia! Thank you so much, friend! ❤️❤️❤️

I'm hanging in there. I hope you are, too, Maureen. ❤️

💙

STRETCH ~ by Martyn Pedler The only way I can trace the call is if you keep him on the line. That way I can pinpoint his location before the bomb detonates. Ask him questions. Maybe start with: why? People love to talk about…

“It’ll be easy, intimate.”

"(I’ll no longer be in the room, watching and listening. I died years ago. My mission lives on in you.)"

@martynpedler.com in Milk Candy Review milkcandyreview.home.blog/2026/04/09/s...