Heartlines Spec, Issue 9 (Winter 2025)

Issue 9 features farewells, apocalypses, the decay of laws of physics and things lurking in the water, waiting to drag you under. These endings are all balanced with new beginnings. Much like the death card in tarot signifies transition, these stories and poems speak of new, kinder, communities that emerge from the rubble, of gardens that spread after the end, of the metamorphosis of a life into another. Short Fiction Counting To A Hundred by Aishatu Ado The Last Two Gardeners of Mars by Irene W. Collins Snow, Stars, Stone by Ariel Marken Jack Of Flowers and Snails by Allie Leigh After Ever, Happily by Elis Montgomery How Grey was my Valley by M. J. Pettit Looped by Nadia Radovich At the End of the World, Meet Me By the Vending Machines by Catherine Tavares Poetry grotto by Leah Duarte I Consult a Spiritualist by Merna Dyer Skinner On Time We Have Spent by Holly Easton Missing You, No Matter Where I Am by Anna Madden Five of Us by Jayasri Sridhar Non-Fiction See You After Dark (When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder) by Laura DeHaan Volunteering Something of Myself by Monique Cuillerier