Autumn Leaves, Autumn Lives

by Pablo Libedinsky

The old man shuffled along the solitary path, crunching dead leaves under his feet. The cold breeze, the autumn smell, and the spectacle of red, gold, brown, and ochre leaves dancing in the wind made him feel alive. He spotted an empty bench, sat down, leaned back, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. The wind surged, and layer by layer the leaves began to pile on him. When the wind stopped, the man had disappeared, buried under a silent mound of dry foliage. A sudden gust shattered the stillness, blowing the leaves away, leaving a clean, desolate bench.

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Pablo Libedinsky is a retired computer programmer living in San Francisco. He wrote a few stories when he was 12 years old and then stopped, later returning to writing as an adult. His stories have been published in Down in the Dirt, Let Me Tell You a Story, The Gorko Gazette, 10x10Flash and CommuterLit.

The Act of Looking Up

by Lili Taylor

I've discovered something interesting about the act of looking up. Try this experiment when you're next out on the street. Stand on the sidewalk, look up, and stay looking up for a good couple of minutes. I guarantee you a fellow human walking by will pass you, pause, and then look up too. I don't know where it comes from, this instinct to look up when another human is looking up. Is it from the way, way old days when scary creatures jumped down on us from the tree branches above?

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Lili Taylor is an American actress. Her six sentences are excerpted from Turning to Birds, The Power and Beauty of Noticing.

The Gorge

by Lisa Lahey

When Amos found me, I looked like a wet bundle of rags lying at the bottom of the gorge. My long, brown hair was tangled across my chalk white skin and my glassy brown eyes stared at the clouds, seeing nothing. My legs were splayed in an obscene pose. I’d been thrown into the gorge, not placed there. My long, heavy skirts wrapped around my waist leaving nothing to the imagination. If I wasn’t dead, I’d die of embarrassment.

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Lisa Lahey's work has appeared in magazines such as 34th Parallel, Spadina Literary Review, and others.