A row of lilacs covered with a summer snow. Ten white butterflies.\ Donal Mahoney

He should have married someone, James tells himself at 80 coughing in bed with the flu. He remembers very well that Miranda was a nice girl.

My wife’s upset because I won’t answer the phone in the middle of the night even though the phone’s on my side of the bed.

In 1958 Elmer’s was the only high school in his county that had been integrated. Basketball was the big sport. People in the little town filled the gym every Tuesday and Friday. They ro...

It’s Monday not Sunday and the frail lady in black is the only person in the pews. She walked in with

Ginny didn’t know if it was a large pond or a small lake in the middle of the beautiful park where she had been hired right after high school to help with maintenance of the grounds. No...

A sense of shame is missing in the world today. If you find it, burp Donal Mahoney

Every evening, up in my rooom, I try to finish a poem but Chicago is hot and it’s better outside,

It’s a small backyard I’ve watched for years from an upstairs window while chained to a computer. Whatever the weather

Technology is wonderful, especially in medicine, Elmo told Opal, the day their son Brett called to tell them the good news. The doctor had told Brett and Debbie their first child would ...

Wally Anderson, father of three daughters, was not pleased after reading an email from Shelly, his eldest, a week before Father’s Day. He thought she might be coming to visit for the ho...

Old Tim drove 600 miles back home to his shed in the woods a month after burying his wife up north in the city where they me… more than 60 years ago.

If smiles had echoes all the world would hear Grandma’s bouncing off the stars Donal Mahoney