Dear Readers,

Happy Solstice. This year as we journeyed into “the big dark” I’ve been reflecting back over the past year—the highs and lows of it, the moments that were perfect that I wished would last forever, and the moments I wished I could forget. This season’s selections aren’t inherently wintery—instead they engage with all the seasons of the year and our lives, a look back over what we can’t forget.

In “Zipping Around Lightbulbs,” Laila Amado captures the ecstasy of a summer romance. In just over 100 words we see the colorful saturation of the world when one is falling in love, with just a hint of the heartbreak that will inevitably follow such joy.

“I Still Hear you Climbing to the Top of my Roof,” by Kianna Greene, explores that heartbreak. Its narrator is putting off putting away the ladder to her lover used to use to get to her rooftop. As she casts a retrospective glance over the relationship, she acknowledges all the signs of future heartbreak, but she is desperately trying to will the past into the present once again.

In “Do My Mom’s Suicidal Tendencies Manifest Now as Unfinished Blankets at the Nursing Home?” by Emily Dressler, the yarn the narrator’s mother crochets with takes on a life of its own, spilling chaotically over the room, the perfect web to trap and tell the story of her mother’s life, and tell the tale of their own shifting relationship.

“Bounce, Dance, Dig,” by Claudia Monpere is a story of transformation and of mothers and daughters. Its characters are goats and flowers and badgers, playful and wary by turn, they are navigating their own liberation, and their mothers’ as well.

“Promise Me Something Sweet,” by Moisés R. Delgado, is also a story about mothers and children, about the hunger to be loved, and how the urge to feed often stands in for the urge to give love, to others and to ourselves.

“Efficiency Measures,” by Matt Kendrick, engages with the ways we communicate now through emojis, gifs, and the like, telling a complete story as though it is a rebus tale from a children’s book (only in our case, the Rebus clues have been replaced with their descriptors from an emoji keyboard). The conceit of the piece does not interfere in any way with the true emotion that runs through it, the sense that something has been lost as we lose our language.

I hope these stories are bright spots that stick with you through this dark season.

Carolyn Abram 
Guest Flash Fiction Editor