Stone Soup Magazine
— A child imagines friends attending a funeral in Los Angeles, writes herself a letter from them, then greets their actual return with the comfort of her own fiction.
— A child shares an apricot with a bird that grows arms, carries her away, then transforms into a beaked human named Carry in a world where apricots hang above.
— A girl faces her aunt's terminal illness through the metaphor of a falling bomb while a mourning dove sits motionless on their roof, refusing to move.
— A philosophical meditation on the concept of nothing — its paradoxical presence in absence, its role in thought and space, and its unexpected value in our lives.
— A dying man in a retirement home reflects on his life's losses—a friend's death, a failed marriage, and the changing nature of chess—while watching a cherry tree bloom.