You lost your scarf in the park on Cromwell Street and I’ve been looking for it ever since. You might have left it on the bench where you first said the words. I hope I'll find it waving in the breeze, a flag signalling, 'Here I am, I've been here the whole time.'  It's not there today and I'm afraid someone might have picked it up. It feels like a betrayal to admit it but there are lots of benches in the park, they all look the same.  Your favourite place was the Pavilion Cafe, the one that overlooks the boating lake, where we would spend long Sunday mornings. You'd order two hot chocolates and those pastries that I can't remember the name of.  At least once a week I ask the lady who works in the cafe to look through their lost property box. At first she’d shake her head and apologise when she returned empty handed. She’d slide three chocolate digestives onto the plate with my hot chocolate.      These days she says, 'No, not today.' Not today, or tomorrow or yesterday. I try to stop going there.  On Wednesday's I take a day off, searching is my full-time job now, and meet my sister for lunch.  'Are you still looking for—' 'Yes, the scarf,' I say it at exactly the same time she says, 'Love?' Then there's silence. 'It's been eighteen months,' she says. I know that. I've watched each one creep through the park, changing things without my permission. Sometimes I still set the table for two, sometimes I still cook your favourite meals and sometimes I still call you. Your scarf is maroon and white striped. Made from alpaca wool. I wish I could pull what's left of you out from amongst the fibres.   --- Emma Challis is a writer from Essex and holds a BA in Creative Writing from Brunel University. Her short stories have featured in Flash Flood 2024 and in the anthology It’s Complicated (2017). Her poetry has featured in the chapbook Skin. She is shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2025 and was shortlisted for the 2024 Bridport Prize. She is currently working on her first novel.

A new recipe gusted in with the grit of autumn leaves and browned petals. A new spell to summon him. Reluctant and eager, she measures out almond meal in that house of cobwebbed memory, where hope gathers in folds upon the floor.  Maybe. If she had been less measured. Let his hands fold around hers, let him pour into the open bowl of her love. She melts butter and chocolate, stirring it soft and gleaming, luscious. She will never know luscious, although her heart melts. She knows bitter. Regret settles dusty on every fly-spotted vase, every tarnished tray. She cracks each egg with a butter knife, mixes its viscous yellow and white into sugar. Her own eggs, deep inside, rattle and call. Unused. Eggs beat to pale and creamy, despite the salt of her tears. She mixes in almond meal, adds the cooled butter and chocolate. Pours the batter into a buttered tin, slides it into the oven. The crumbling husk of her wedding cake oversees. She sits in her chair. Around her, the cliff house rocks with the wind. Encrusted chandeliers no longer tinkle on blustery days. The smell from the oven alerts her. She cools the cake and cuts it, thick brown crumbs falling to the plate. She places pieces on gold-rimmed plates, sets them out on the table, a silver fork beside.  Now he appears, his presence more life-like than hers. Radiant. She lets her eyes fill again, this time with sweet, dripping memory. She gorges on his smile, on those days long past. And stops. Chokes back a final goodbye. She clears a space in the grime of a window and looks out to sea, to the endless grey sea, chopped with waves. The smell of baking recedes, its comfort now more wistful than treacherous.   --- Kathy Prokhovnik writes fiction (long form, short stories, microfiction) and nonfiction. Her podcast series, ‘Seeking Sydney’, is produced with Spineless Wonders publishing. She is currently finalising her second novel, Safety in the Home.

Ma shrugs, it’s how he was – intrusive, shaming. To me, the stippled mucosa telescoping into view is like veined marble, unknowable beauty. Zita says the faecoliths trapped in a diverticulum means he has to carry us little shits with him forever wherever he’s gone. Zain says bam! as the cauliflower polyp in his transverse colon appears. His little brain, Ma says sputtering with laughter. I watch the deep, pink mystery unfold like a glistening. I read the silken folds for clues. It finishes at his ileocaecal valve - an elephant’s trunk reaching out, looking for something to hold on to.  --- Sumitra is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes to make sense of her experiences. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com

Our teenage daughter is like the shoemaker's elf, she only comes out at night. Despite our descriptions of the sunshiny garden, must-see TV, bread baking, Grandma calling, Scrabble, deer with fawn, parades, announcements of global catastrophes. Conversations go like this:    Knock-knock. Silence. Knock-knock. Silence. Knock-knock. But oh, the night! What our teen can do overnight! In the morning, we wake to find our dishes washed, our floors swept, our laundry folded and set in baskets. Windows washed, carpets vacuumed, wastebaskets emptied, etc. Pegasus still huffing from her pre-dawn flight. But not just that. Sometimes there are cantaloupe rosettes, or a roll of toilet paper, folded up and faucet-stamped. Sometimes a handmade card. A wildflower bouquet. What does one do with a daughter such as this? I can tell you we do not complain.  We do not take her to the pediatrician or write "asking for a friend" posts on social media.  We listen to other parents say “Ours has such a mouth”, and “Ours is such a problem”, and we nod and express sympathy, but otherwise we say nothing. There is nothing to say. We appreciate her efforts. We like not having chores. But honestly, in truth, we’d prefer she do normal teenage stuff, whatever that is nowadays.     --- Twelve years ago, Alice Kinerk planted bamboo in her front yard, despite neighbors who claimed she’d regret it once it grew out of control. It has grown out of control, but she hasn’t regretted it yet. Read more of Alice’s fiction at alicekinerk.com.

A cry sends her stumbling to his room, where she leans against the doorframe, dizzy with sleep. The darkness seeps into her, flooding her head with half-formed thoughts. He calls again and she goes to his side, passing her hands over him. ‘Shush, I'm here.' He's soaked through, and there’s that familiar dread: the pull to sleep fighting the duty to act. Duty wins, though anger at it makes her bite her lip and fist her hands; makes her still for seconds, deaf to his weeping. It's the third night in a row. She switches on the lamp and a puddle of light shows his pale blank face. Bending to take his weight she slides and pulls him to the chair, then begins to strip the bed: the urine seems to be everywhere. Several times she stops to pat his shoulder. ‘Don't worry, we'll get you dry, won't we?' The night gives her voice this new intonation. She can't help talking to him like he's a child. One of their children. Reels of memory begin to unspool before her. How they'd worked to change a wet bed together, each of them moving round the other in a dance, a song of whispers: I'll do that, you take her. Shush, we're here, let's get you dry.  Now she drops the bedclothes and kneels, resting her head on her husband's legs. He mutters and stretches his arms, still slim and firm. For a second, she thinks he will gather her into them, as he used to when they fell back into bed. We're awake now, what shall we do? She waits, knowing he is senseless of this history. But then his fingers are in her hair, twisting into the strands, remembering. And she laughs, wide awake for this moment, this night.   --- Liv Norman is a short fiction writer living in Surrey with her husband and three children. Her flash, short stories and micro fiction have won or placed in competitions, and appeared in Splonk, NFFD Anthology, and Paragraph Planet among others. Best micro fiction nominee 2024.