Flash Nonfiction
Cleaving
For my grandmother He wanted out of the New England cold. He dreamed of the incandescent possibilities of sunshine, and when she didn’t want to leave her home, he divorced her. So modern, so cutting-edge for the sixties. The children were of age. She could keep working in the silk mill, she could keep the …
But So Briefly!
The days you left early, your head would leave behind a hollow on the pillow. Over time, in my slumber I had begun to dream of this shape. However, upon waking up—every time I wished to touch and hold the hollow, it would be difficult. Even impossible. My hand would enter that small basin of …
Sweet River
It is eight a.m. on a Saturday in February, and I am mucking stalls in a small horse barn in Whately, Mass. I can already feel the soreness in my arms and shoulders. Next, I will fill hay nets and five gallon water buckets before walking Bugsy, a very stubborn white miniature horse, around the …
Animals
On the beach, changing out of her wet swimsuit, looking for a laugh, she bent over, spread her butt cheeks apart with her hands, and wiggled her sandy bum. The man with the sunburned face turned away. “Oh god!” he grumbled. “Honey! Stop that,” I said. “Why, Mom?” she said. ~ ~ ~ Because you …
The Rain Touches Everything
This morning we walk to school hand in hand sheltered by umbrellas. Do you smell the rain? she asks. I do, I say. I have always loved the smell of rain. I look back at her as if she’s read my mind or if she’s playing a trick on me because I have always wanted …
The Queen of Queens
The Lemon Ice King of Corona was a converted garage storefront with a royal blue awning, built in Queens during the World’s Fair of 1964. Whenever I went there with my mom as a child, it was an unexpected delight—never planned, always at a moment’s notice, a “how about we stop here” that thrilled me. …
Scattered Seeds
My grandmother plucked seeds wherever she went—tucked them away in her black Mantou pockets like future promises. After a walk through Sadee roundabout, her pockets swelled with eucalyptus, tangerine, and jasmine seeds. From every corner, she conjured abundance. Even a rotten tomato holds hundreds of harvests, she’d say, you can ward off future hunger. As …
Waterlily
My mother is a waterlily, brushstrokes and all. Those giant ones, canvases full on the walls of the Orangerie, tucked into the round room like curtains closed. My father and I walk past them after she is gone, visit Paris like it is our destiny, like we will find her here, floating on the green …
The Silence Around Us
Christy didn’t ease into the story. She never did. She dropped it like a stone into still water, watching the ripples spread on their own. We were sitting in her minivan, a faded blue Ford Aerostar with the headliner sagging into one growing bubble in the center, when she said it. Her voice was neither …
When the Ultrasound Technician Says, “Something’s Not Right…”
She is not talking about the cysts she pointed out minutes ago, but about sharks washing ashore. As she studies your breast tissue on the monitor, the light from the screen illuminates her face in an unnatural blue. You are grateful when her smalltalk breaks the silence. “Locally?” you ask, realizing you’d been holding your …
Paper Grenades
The envelope always arrived with the same yellow sticker, a warning that it had come from a correctional facility. My father wrote in pencil, his words beginning crisp and clear, ending thick and smudged. Sometimes a sentence or paragraph was blacked out with marker, a reminder that someone else had read his letters before me. …
