by Victoria Melekian
The women in my family grow wings, big and feathery white, hard to hide and hard to manage when sorrow weighs you down and the wings don’t work and you land in faraway places having to think about narwhals and pollywogs, happy things, until you’re light enough to flap back home, ignoring the houses beneath, the people inside with not enough to eat or enough insulin or enough hope to want to wake up in the morning. Soaring above glimmering grids of light is gorgeous, but maintaining a constant cheeriness as the world below churns—well, I understand why Mom and Grandma gave up their wings years ago. It’s difficult to sustain concern for anything other than staying aloft. I assured Grandma I wanted to care. She clipped my wings using her small sewing scissors. It stung, but now I can feel all of it: despair, outrage, grief, delight, the whole earthbound mess.
6S
Victoria Melekian writes poetry and short fiction. Her poetry collection “The Accidental Courage of Our Lives” is available from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. “Unhoused,” Victoria’s novella-in-flash, won first place in the 2026 Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in-Flash Awards. For more, see her website.
20260922
Versions
by Elodie A. Roy
In some versions of her story, her husband was “a botanist.” In some others, he was “a porter” and “dense.” In yet another, she called him “a good egg.” I never met him. I occasionally wondered whether she had married several men, or only that one who contained several beings, a tangled infinity of lives. And I wondered whether that made her free.
6S
Elodie A. Roy's fiction appears in The Stinging Fly, 3:AM Magazine, Flash Frog, New World Writing, Blink-Ink, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. She is based in Berlin.
In some versions of her story, her husband was “a botanist.” In some others, he was “a porter” and “dense.” In yet another, she called him “a good egg.” I never met him. I occasionally wondered whether she had married several men, or only that one who contained several beings, a tangled infinity of lives. And I wondered whether that made her free.
6S
Elodie A. Roy's fiction appears in The Stinging Fly, 3:AM Magazine, Flash Frog, New World Writing, Blink-Ink, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. She is based in Berlin.
Posted by
Robert McEvily
20260921
Stuffed Shirt
by Marc Nash
My new spouse laid my freshly ironed shirt on the newly made bed. She folded the sleeves onto the shirt's body, cuff resting on cuff, rather than stretched out to the sides. Like a straitjacket. Like a seppuku. Like a burial shroud. I bought drip-dry shirts from then on.
6S
Marc Nash has written five flash fiction collections and seven novels. His 2018 novel, Three Dreams in the Key of G, was short listed for the 2018 Not the Booker Prize. He lives and works in London.
My new spouse laid my freshly ironed shirt on the newly made bed. She folded the sleeves onto the shirt's body, cuff resting on cuff, rather than stretched out to the sides. Like a straitjacket. Like a seppuku. Like a burial shroud. I bought drip-dry shirts from then on.
6S
Marc Nash has written five flash fiction collections and seven novels. His 2018 novel, Three Dreams in the Key of G, was short listed for the 2018 Not the Booker Prize. He lives and works in London.
Posted by
Robert McEvily
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