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Flash Fiction Horoscopes

Astrological insights from twelve of our most recent flash stories

Fiction | Flash Fiction
February 4, 2022

I don’t know why people hate mistrust Mercury retrogrades. Mercury is a speedy planet with a smaller-than-earth orbit, and that means we have three, sometimes four, retrogrades a year. The lore of everything getting messy! Yes, I too have had tech failures. (Take this past Sunday: an alarm I set on my phone to tell me to be ready for an IG live kept going off during the IG live, but if I turned it off, it would disconnect me from the session.) 

In astrology, as in Tarot, it’s important to see planetary weather as lawful neutral, to see light and shadow. Mercury retrogrades are invitations to slow down before moving ahead. (I should have checked that all my alarms were off.) Retrogrades are great times to clean out closets, reconnect with dear friends that you’ve been meaning to, and for writers, it’s a great time to revise, look at journals, and nurture the seeds you planted. 

On the day this third iteration of the Flash Fiction Horoscopes gets published—February 4—every planet in our solar system goes direct until May. Yup, even little Mercury. A Mercury retrograde ending with the new moon in Aquarius is a celestial clean slate. If you need one, you have an invitation to be or do anything. Coinciding with the Lunar New Year/Tết, the collective is transitioning from the Metal Ox to the Water Tiger. Like our wistful and electrifying Flash Fiction writers, let’s all step into the wild with tenacity and power, like the Water Tiger.

These playful horoscopes each feature a line from one of twelve recent pieces in the Flash Fiction series. We invite you to read your sun, moon, and rising signs (wait, what does this mean?). Read the horoscope of your crush, your bestie, your nemesis—read them all. No one can stop you from devouring them all, even the past ones. No one. 

—Swati Khurana
Flash Fiction Editor, The Margins


They are sisters who wear their hair short and their laughs long, often at jokes they’ve been carrying inside themselves for years.

—from “Homecoming” by Ashanya Lingam

F liked to call me a homebody, and decided it was her job to take me out and do all the things I should experience when I was young.

—from “F” by Mai Tran

But what can an old woman do with such willful, modern girls. Here, have your fill. There won’t be any betel nut or elaichi or poetry in their house.

—from “Five Scents” by Roohi Choudhry

I try to find air. I swim as fast as I can before it gets dark, and I begin to let go.

—from “Ten Phases to Night” by Anjali Ramakrishnan

She remembers that her mother told her it was okay to mourn a breakup because loss is loss and grief is grief…

—from “Atrophy” by Maya McCoy

My hands moved quickly to recreate the vision of her face. Before it faded away.

—from “Cursed Hands” by Sam Nakahira

I just don’t think my ancestors suffered so I could spend ten hours a day shifting pixels around to raise ad revenue for a corporation complicit in genocide.

—from “A Day in the Life of a Software Engineer” by Jefferson Lee 

The woman’s bed was sedimented with layers of bolsters, throws, tassels; the decorative buttons on her duvet pressed into his back when she straddled him.

—from “John Dô” by Jennifer F.

I can feel my feet forcing me toward them, my heart already swaying to the beat I am about to play.

—from “Percussion” by Aqdas Aftab

I watched as the llama nibbled on the bag’s tan-colored handles, blinking its sparkling globe eyes.

—from “Jessica Park Dropped Out of MIT but We Aren’t Supposed to Talk about It” by Minyoung Lee

The apps were done away with altogether: no more fees paid out to them, and none of their annoying chimes, pings, ding-dings.

—from “Tony” by Jennifer Wang 

—It’s the end of the world and I can’t even hold you.  

—from “’Til Death Do Us Part” by Sezin Koehler