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What I should have said to him that night on the bridge is Don’t let go, but what I actually said is Do it and whether he would have done it anyway — full, as he was, of being seventeen and a crate of Special Red — went down into the black water with him. And for weeks the adults wept, and the teams of frogmen combed the silt as far the estuary where the river spools into the flat Atlantic, but no trace of Stu would ever reward their efforts. We hung around, the rest of us, though we avoided the bridge and the river and talking about him. We sat on the wall of the race track; we skulked in the churchyard and threw stones at the cans we balanced on gravestones. And for all our strut and disbelief, not one of us back then would have predicted Stu would show up again all of thirty years later, tangle-haired and bearded, having lost his memory in an Ashram in Rishikesh. And of course he didn’t. But now, on those occasions late at night when his sister – my wife – stares into her glass, and clinks the ice around, and asks me what I think really happened to him, I make up stories like that for her, and for me, and this is one of them. Tim Craig lives in London. A winner of the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction, his small stories have appeared three times in the Best Microfiction anthology and in many literary journals in the US and UK. His debut collection, ‘Now You See Him,’ was published in 2022 by Ad Hoc Fiction.

Do you remember the time we were driving down Main Street in your dad's old blue Monte Carlo and "Fast Car" played on the radio? You said the song was ours. What a fucking cliché. You and I were just two punk kids from a small town covered in dust and hopelessness. We were lucky to graduate from high school after all the ditching and partying we did. But we dreamed big. Do you remember? You were waiting to hear from that record company your band sent a demo to and I was going to write a novel that would make Stephen King shit his pants. We would move to Los Angeles, buy a three story glass cube, and invite our famous neighbors over for sushi and séances. We would attend our class reunion in a blood red Mustang. That asshole quarterback who lied about me sucking his dick in the back of his Camaro would challenge us to a race and we'd smoke him. Everyone would comment on our matching black leather dresses and thigh high boots. You with your blue hair and me with my purple. Those two cheerleaders that always talked shit to you would beg for tickets to your next concert, and the principal who swore I'd never amount to much would ask me to sign his copy of my book. Keanu Reeves would be in your music videos, and would play the main character in the movie based on my book. Either way, he would be a vampire. Do you remember those days? The days before your father caught us kissing and heavy petting in your bedroom after we'd gotten into his tequila, and he told you he'd kick you out. The days before you told me you had nowhere else to go and you'd have to live by his rules. The days before your father called my parents and told them I was a "pinchi bruja," and they forced me to go to confession every week for a month. The days before I stopped dying my hair and started working the register at the supermarket around the corner. The days before you moved to the next town over with some guy I knew you didn't love and took a job at the daycare your Tia Rosa owned. Do you remember? Because I wish I could forget.

My Boy, When you read this letter, I will be dead. I’m sorry, but you need to let me go. If you don’t, I might start haunting people, and with my weird sense of humour and temper combined with superpowers and invisibility… Who knows what I’m capable of. Don’t be too sad. Think of me crying with laughter, sneezing uncontrollably, throwing pistachios at people for no other reason than to amuse myself, baking, singing along to loud music, calling out because there’s a flower/bird/cat blooming/flying/walking by. I enjoyed my life, and I loved it with a passion when you came along. I’m so proud of who you’ve become. I’m so proud to call you my son. Keep going, keep laughing, keep growing. Remember to breathe, and to choose your battles. Now, here’s a list of things for you to do. Call it my last wishes if you must. 1.) Organise a party to celebrate life. Play loud music: Rock, pop, reggae, boogie for all I care, but it must be happy music, and of course, play my favourite. Serve champagne, pizza, and chocolate. There’s no need for anything else (see note). Sing, laugh, and dance. Let the music free you. Note: Funky bite-size posh food is a waste of appetite and money (Yes, that includes sushi, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this ad aeternam—sorry, that was my last bad joke, I promise). Note: If any of our annoying neighbours complain, do the finger to them in my name, let them know it’s my last goodbye. 2.) Climb a hill before dawn, a warm cup of cappuccino (see note) in your hand. Feel your body strain, and your lungs’s effort as you reach the top. Sit on the grass or a rock, facing East. Breathe in and out through the nose. Relax. Close your eyes for a moment and listen to the birds as they wake and welcome the new day to come. Open your eyes, and enjoy the sunrise, the magical hour. Note: I hope you appreciate the fact that I won’t impose an espresso on you, although anything sweet and creamy is a dessert, not a coffee. 3.) Take a weekend off. Pack a light bag, but include clothes for any kind of weather and an umbrella (see note). Go to the train/coach station and buy a ticket for somewhere you haven’t been before (see note). Go alone. Focus on the discovery; try new food, walk around, sit at a café and admire life unfolding before your eyes, stroll through a park and open your ears to the whispers of the trees. Nature is wisdom. Note: Pick a nice place; there’s no need to rush into it and get the next train/coach out of town, quite the opposite. It’s about slowing down and enjoying the moment. Carpe Diem. Note: Since you’re unlikely to pack an umbrella, at least take a raincoat. Last, but not least. This one must remain unnumbered, for I despise even digits, and ‘three’ represents the triskelion of elements, the full circle of existence. Love life as I love you. Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos is a Breton writer, teacher, mother, nature and music lover, foodie, dreamer. She likes to create stories in her head. She lives in Athens, Greece.

The first time we saw it, we were rowing under Barnes Bridge, cool shadows flooding our lungs with their mossy scent. Like the black swish of an eel, only larger. Eight blades dropped in the water at our cox’s command, “Hold it up!” Our voices splintered. “OMG is that a-“ “Porpoise?” “Dolphin?” “Here?” The waves softened as our breath rasped. Training for Henley Women’s in the midst of A-level exams was slaying us. A few feet away a black curve rose and breached. Water sluiced over its sides, the pale underside of its belly. Its wide tail smacked the river. “Whale,” we breathed as one, gripping the sides of our boat. Coach’s voice crackled on the cox box. She was on the launch, back with the second eight. “Girls, why have you stopped?” She said she’d call the government hotline and ordered us to finish our piece. Sunlight pierced the clouds, whitening the surface of the river. All morning we’d been struggling with the turns and dips of the blade, each slide and recovery. All week Coach had moved us around like chess pieces, looking for the combo that delivered the ultimate speed and power. Now we pulled in time, adrenalin firing our muscles. We found our rhythm and skimmed across the water, hearts buoyed by the sight of our whale. After, we rowed back to the club, stored the shell and hauled weary legs up the steps to the Boathouse mums. As we gulped down bowls of porridge, they said there’d been another sighting near Chiswick: a baby minke, stranded from its mother. We bristled at their downcast voices and shaking heads. We’d seen it; it was magnificent. It could survive on its own. It could swim to freedom. We survived Covid, survived months in our rooms, in our pyjamas, biding our time through family meals, family movies, family everything. Released back to the wild, we’d bolted back to school, to rowing, to parties, to life. The whale would make it too. They’d see. ## At Kew Bridge, we jogged along the river and scouted through gaps in the brush until we spotted a long dark shape sloshing its way westward. Cupping our hands, we shouted, “Turn around!” The baby minke flicked its tail but kept swimming with the tide toward Richmond Lock. Away from the ocean. Flipping flood tide. We knew all about its syrupy drag. We knew all about aching muscles and ripping fatigue. We also knew all about endurance, how Coach’s voice made us dig deep, how we’d learned to carry on past our limits. We shouted some more. For a moment the whale responded to our encouragement, swimming so close to the bank we saw its blowhole gape open and shut. “Yes!” we screamed. It submerged. We texted our mothers to say we wouldn’t be home, shrugging off their concerns about dinner, schedules, A-level revision. ## On the concrete ledge by Richmond Locks, people jostled, snapped photos, speculated in bright voices. Night fell. Rescue workers in full-body waterproofs and divers laid out strips of sunshine yellow tarp. We wrapped arms around each other in the chilly haze of streetlamps as they tried hour after hour to coax the baby minke onto the inflatable. The whale thrashed arcs of phosphorescent water, lit by searchlights and strobing blue lights. People began to leave as the baby minke’s protest diminished to a mere flick of its tail. They called it at two thirty. The last time we saw our whale, we stood with fingers entwined as they switched off the emergency vehicle lights, the searchlights, the diver’s headtorches. The river was one with the night, inky black and still. Cole Beauchamp (she/her) is a copywriter by day and fiction writer by night. She was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and has stories in trampset, Janus Literary, Ellipsis Zine, Sundial, Free Flash Fiction and Lost Balloon. She lives in London with her girlfriend, has two children and an exuberant Maltipoo. You can find her on Twitter at @nomad_sw18 and on Mastodon at @nomad_sw18@zirk.us

In Philadelphia, My Love We turned the streets of Philadelphia into fighting arenas when we’d drag our issues from jazz bars and take them outside, intoxicated. Some part of that we can blame on tequila sunrises but we both know most of that was a manifestation of things we mutually decided were better left unsaid, until we said them. Out loud, unnecessarily visceral, all the more uncomfortable what with the July heat. Passion, we blamed it on an unparalleled connection. You’ve never met anyone like me, I’ve always wanted to meet someone like you so when it was good, it was good but when it was bad … In some outlying part of my mind I still find this to be true. In that part, I still wish it was you. An Ode to Sin I wish I knew sooner that vindication could never present itself to people who’ve never sinned. I wish I knew sooner that whenever our tongues performed near perfect choreographies to an endless tango in our mouths; a memory their muscles never forgot and would shortly enact in a refined fashion, that it was bliss they were emanating. There was never anything wrong with falling asleep in your arms and having your face be the first thing I see the following day, I always thought we were sacred in an unholy way.

when we lived on the moon we danced to techno wearing spacesuits caught space rocks in tiny glass jars we laughed loudly in a dark sky there were no stars we learned to moon walk on the surface scattered small seeds in the moon dust we prayed for moon life in the moonshine the small seeds saved us A word from the author: I am based in Brighton, UK, and am studying part-time on a creative writing course. I have a passion for reading and enjoy writing short fiction and poetry. My absolute favourite novel is the mind-blowing Bunny by Mona Awad.

I fell asleep with my left hand resting on my phone, and when I woke up the phone had become part of me. My hand had grown around it, had integrated the beveled sides, and where I had once had a human left hand, now I had a rectangular patch of technology with small, stubby fingers protruding from the edges. This didn’t disturb me as much as you might think. Like anybody, I spend most of my time with a phone in my hand, absorbed. The absorption was literal and fleshly now, was all, rather than attention-based. I could feel notifications instead of hearing or seeing them. Spotify would play music immediately if a line from the song so much as ran through my head. All the world’s knowledge sat at the end of my arm; a neuron flickered and I could recite the history of the English crown, or the molecular formula for dopamine. Envy flashed on the faces of strangers around me; they had to fumble in their pockets or purses, while my hand lit up or went dark whenever I blinked. All things proceeded as they would have otherwise. One day, as I walked in my neighborhood, scrolling, I chanced to look up at the sky. The unfolding cataclysm became visible to me then, through my own eyes, not through the window in my flesh, and I had just a few moments to wonder at the work of our hands before my breath stopped. Katharine Coldiron is the author of Ceremonials and Junk Film. Find her at kcoldiron.com or on Twitter @ferrifrigida.

Bathe your body with excellent fatty foods so that you burn more quickly. Go soft in the joints and hard places. Your cremation technician can only burn so many bodies in a day so be sure to light up like a candle inside the oven. Be blue flame curling up towards the heavens. Refrain from excreting too many gases on your way out. Be flammable, but not too explosive. A steady flame for your cremation technician to lose themselves in, staring at the dancing heat until it dwindles. Be smoldering coals with chunks of the person you used to be. Do not fight against the dying of the flame. Your cremation technician has other bodies to burn. Ly Faulk has loved reading and writing for as long as they could read or write. They still believe in the power of the written word to change lives.

Silverfish twist through crevices in the Escomb church walls. Alive in the shadows. Centuries of insects slick with Saxon blood. They shimmer across our laps where Dad and I sit on wooden pew benches, alone in the dark, gazing up at the narrow chancel arch. A millennium of war and religion dusts my lips, my tongue. Chokes my throat. My father rises. Pierces the pious air with his fist, meaning, let’s go for a stroll. I take his arm. He straightens. Whistles for his childhood dog, Rosie, who leaps from a steamer trunk full of Dad’s memories. Good pup, I say, bending my head through the low doorway. Outside, the sky moves like a rat snake shedding its skin. My dead sister sits on a 12th-century tombstone etched with a skull and crossbones. She kicks her bare heels against the skull’s sooted eyes. I’m waiting, she says. On the far side of the cemetery, Dad spies a young rhino stuck in the Limpopo mud. The river slugs by, watching us with one greasy eye. Hurry, Dad says in Zulu, tossing me a jeep and seven strong men. It takes us hours and rope after rope, but we free the beast. Dad beams about the rhino for his remaining three months of breath. Though godless, you were always the smart one, he says, calling me by my sister’s name. Lisa Alletson was raised in South Africa and the UK, and now lives in Canada. Her stories and poems are published in New Ohio Review, Crab Creek Review, Pithead Chapel, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Typehouse Magazine, Emerge Journal. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and Best MicroFiction. Her debut chapbook, Good Mother Lizard, won the 2022 Headlight Review poetry contest. You can find her published work at www.lisaalletson.com.

Reclamation Of A Land Once Stolen Her dress flows. Silk of mulberry heavied by tears. Yampee-eyed, cracked lips in the yolk of day. She appears hollowed. She tells me its time to gather the pieces that ran astray, to wash this temple sullied by hands that grasp and bruise and take; to whip this body with redemption and sage. Her dress falls. Silk of mulberry gathered at her ankles. Hesitant eyes look upon strange land in the egg of day. She appears hopeful. I tell her its time to puzzle the pieces, caught and tamed to sanctify this body, still sacred still worthy, unchanged. I await her repossession. Only A Name Weary walls whisper a name in the haunting eye of night as cold winds rattle the remains of days, long gone, still etched across my cerebrum. I mourned my dead like a nation at war – indeed we must press on to any end, at any cost. I mourned my dead none at all for what good is it to wail and long. Still, as the night crawls, I have gained nothing at all but echoes of torment and our memories’ gall. Akleyiaha R is a twenty-one year old Trinidadian poet. She is an entrepreneur and student, and has been writing since the age of twelve. She marvels at self-expression through the art forms. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Dipity Literary Magazine and The Bibliopunk. Her debut book, 'The Skins I've Shed' is coming soon.

FOXFIRE 7 Mama said I was born in the bathtub. Came right out the drain when she was getting ready to wash. The creek was low, that day, so all the water was muddy. And I came out, and a mosquito bit her on the back of the neck. Mama says she still had her clothes on, when it happened, and I came out. Says I already knew how to swim. I don’t know anymore, so I just wade in lakes, knee deep, and think about lead pipes. Nothing’s quite so heavy… right out the drain, like nothing, like I was the water myself. Made the hounds bark. The Worst Things I’ve Done The walls of suburbia are tan bricks stacked over cinderblocks glued down in strokes of slated hammers, gluing me down in the red dirt and black tar. The greatest writers of our time were pretty much dead by the ’90s. Thomas Mann would be an interesting read if I didn’t know him so well. But I do; the worst things I’ve done all look like dying on a beach, lesions full of salt and sand, cysts of the heart—tan grains and tan skin and abrasive black water pool at my ankles, the bone’s out like it could poke through and show me something pure and white, clean and dry, but the only white I see is wet across my chest—shot out by a man old enough to know I’m young enough to know the worst things I’ve done have come, and will come over me again and again like waves, heavy like the ground. PERSPECTIVE / WATERFRONT To have said what I needed to say and been worse off for it. To push, deep in, and pull out bloody—to saw off my leg just to fill my mouth with something other than words. Ripping raw meat would never be enough to show the wound of saying it back and not hearing it the first time. Not that it hurt, just that it was messy. Daniel Miller (they/he) is a new poet from Virginia. They are a student at the University of Mary Washington and have been published in the University's student magazine, The Aubade. His work examines the queer experience from the point of views of a gay male and nonbinary intersection. They are 20 years old, an aspiring hiker, and a Robert Mapplethorpe apologist.

PUFFED UP From wax, Leonardo formed a doughy mass, and when it softened, he shaped it into delicate animals filled with air. He blew into them until they flew into the air. When the air was exhausted, they crashed to the ground. He cleaned the intestines of a sheep so they could be held in the hollow of his hand. He attached them to a blacksmith’s bellows and blew them up until they filled with air and grew transparent, expanding into the room, until everyone watching had to crowd into a corner. For a peculiar lizard caught by a wine grower of Belvedere, and given to him as a curiosity, Leonardo made wings from skin pulled off from other lizards, which he filled with mercury. They quivered and trembled when the lizard moved. He then made for it eyes, a beard, and horns. He tamed it and kept it in a box and terrified his friends with it. IN TANDEM When we moved into our apartment, we painted over the ugly wallpaper in the master bathroom, first with primer, then with white, oil-based paint in an eggshell finish. Using artists’ oil pigments we mixed a Caribbean aquamarine and thinned it with oil glaze. With a ribbed cotton cloth, we ragged the luminous glaze in gentle swirls over the white walls, suggesting the depths of the ocean. My husband created a stencil in mylar of Hokusai’s famous tidal wave rearing its head like a stallion, tossing white flecks of spray like the locks of a horse’s mane. Master of Exakto knives and mathematic intervals, my husband sized the stencil so its repeating pattern fit the wall’s dimensions, and he cut it flawlessly. He invented, and I implemented, balancing on the bathroom counter to apply the stencil to the walls. The waves, in dazzling white and black and dark cobalt, contrasted with the aquamarine. To add to the illusion, we made miniature models of Caribbean fish in paper maché— black drum and red snapper, triggerfish and porgy, grunt and angelfish, seahorse with a curved tail— which we painted realistically and strung using dental floss from hooks in the ceiling, suspended below Hokusai’s waves in the bathroom’s watery element. We didn’t know then about Hokusai and his daughter, how he recognized her talents in childhood and fostered them. She worked alongside him in the studio. It is said that some of the works attributed to him were made by her. In a time and place where women were confined to the domestic sphere, did Katsushita Oi’s obscurity trouble her? Her modesty and her sex were impediments to her renown, so perhaps she was content to add to his. MEDITATION AT NORTH BEACH PARK, BURLINGTON Thickly wooded Juniper Island rises from the lake within swimming distance from shore. The sloping peaks of the Adirondacks, misty blue and far off in the distance, belong to heaven and not to earth. From the beach I watch a storm gather from the mountains, then sweep over the lake. Whitecaps form on the surface. It is like the sea, and it is not like the sea. Rain falls in large drops propelled by a breeze, and a canopy on aluminum poles topples on the beach, somersaulting erratically. Under a shelter, students and faculty gather at an impromptu party celebrating recent graduates. I eat strawberry-rhubarb pie and think of the mountains, eons old. When they were formed, fault lines pushed yellow dolostone above the dark shale, the older stone above the younger. Now I am older, I want to impart history. Shivering children in wet bathing suits wrap themselves in towels. Sometimes the young listen politely and sometimes impatiently, propelled towards lives that haven’t happened yet. I feel my hold on life growing tenuous, like those islands farther off— the Four Brothers—like steppingstones appearing to float in the blue without moving at all.