“They clapped for me during COVID. Then outsourced my job to a robot.” That’s how it ended. Not with a handshake. Not with a thank you. Not even a damn human voice on the line. Just a kid in a collared shirt I’d never seen before, reading off a script through Zoom, telling me my […]

A Short Story for Those Who Remember When People Meant More Than Views “I gave that kid free pie for ten years. He left me 25 cents and a TikTok video.” That’s how it ended. Forty-three years of hot plates, burnt coffee, and knowing how every regular liked their eggs. Poached soft for Earl. Scrambled

by someone who still believes music is not a luxury “They said music class wasn’t essential. Tell that to the blind boy who sang at graduation.” That’s what I told the school board the night they voted to slash the arts program. They didn’t look up. Not once. Just kept scribbling notes on their tablets,

He survived Iraq. But every night at dinner, I watched him disappear. The boy who used to chase fireflies in our backyard, who’d laugh so hard he’d snort milk through his nose, was gone. In his place sat a man in a pressed uniform, medals pinned to his chest, but his eyes—those blue eyes that

The same land that fed 300 families couldn’t feed me and my wife last winter. That’s not metaphor. That’s not exaggeration. That’s just the truth of it.We sat at the kitchen table in December — no crops in the ground, no firewood left but damp split logs, and two slices of store-bought bread between us.

He was a giant once, my Tom, broad as a barn door and unyielding as the steel beams he dragged men out from under at Ground Zero. That was twenty-four years ago, when the world still knew how to clap for heroes. Now, he’s gone, taken by the cough that clawed at his lungs for

“I’ve delivered more babies than I have photos of my own grandchildren.” That’s not a boast—it’s a regret. I say it slowly, like a confession in the quiet of a late Sunday afternoon, the kind when your knees ache more than usual and your hands tremble as you button your shirt. Not because of age,

“I used to start your day—now I can’t even get a call back from my kids.” That’s not a complaint. It’s just a fact. Like the frost on the window this morning, or the silence in the kitchen that used to buzz with the sound of toast popping up and a dog whining for his

“They folded that flag like it meant something—but forgot him two months later.” That was the day I stopped saluting the flag. Don’t get me wrong—Daddy raised me to respect it. Every Fourth of July, we’d stand out by the flagpole he cemented into our front yard, hand over heart, the nylon snapping in the

By Carolyn West “I cleaned the blood off soldiers in Vietnam—and now I can’t afford my insulin.” That’s not a metaphor. That’s my life. I don’t usually talk like this. But last night, I mixed up my pills again. Took the water tablets instead of the glucose meds. Spent the evening trembling under a wool