Stories


A Stroudsburg Story (pt. 3)

By Elissa Greenwald

Jeanette hadn’t been to group therapy for four months, Kelly realized when she did her quarterly review of patients’ records. The young woman was so quiet in their sessions that Kelly hadn’t realized how many Jeanette missed. Kelly had worried about her ever since Jeanette called to tell her she was in the hospital with a rattlesnake bite. She felt guilty since, against regulations, she had driven Jeanette to the trailhead. She offered to visit her in the hospital but Jeanette said…

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A Stroudsburg Story (pt. 2)

By Elissa Greenwald

Sunlight flashed in Kelly’s eyes as she drove home. The bright light reminded her of the summer.  She thought back to how she had met Carl.

It was the first time she had placed a personal ad in the Pocono Record, after answering ads led to a miserable series of dates from which

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A Stroudsburg Story (pt. 1)

By Elissa Greenwald

Eight years after Jeanette Gustavson left her native Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, she returned to the familiar streets lined with three story brick buildings. Jeanette had planned never to return. Yet here she was, outside the second-floor clinic on North Seventh Street on a windy winter evening, hand shaking as she vaped. She stood under the streetlamp on the deserted street, waiting in the midst of a pandemic for her appointment with a drug rehabilitation counselor.

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Lionel My Friend Lost At Sea

By Eliot Wilner

Lionel was eighty-four years old, a friend of mine for many years, and in very good health prior to his disappearance. Whoever imagined that his life would end in such a strange way, that he could simply disappear? It had never crossed my mind that Lionel might die before me. I’m now eighty-four years of age, too, and I’ve been getting more and more accustomed to losing friends and family members. But not that way. Until very recently, I just assumed that…

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Summer Tragedy

By Dolores Regan-Kordon

Each house on Duvet Drive was unique in its grandness featuring imposing doorways or inviting porches. Most offered colorful flowerbeds arranged as though for competition. As she walked under the shade of majestic trees, Gabriela spotted a discarded watering can and a bike left carelessly on the grass. It was what she would have imagined of America if she could have imagined such peace.

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Sun-Stained Sands

By Jack Love

You sat on the rising mounds of sand, hesitant, legs askance With the strong, summer sun lighting up the grains of sands

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