“Design me,” said the clay. “Mold me. Make me unique.” Continue reading
Tag Archives: flash fiction
Reflective
Lyssa learns her new scars by tracing them in the mirror. Still raw and puckered between the stitches. She holds her breath and counts until she can’t look anymore. Yesterday she made it to twenty-seven. Today it’s only eight. She wraps her stomach back up and goes to feed the baby.
Continue readingDefeat
The war isn’t over yet. If there ever was a war.
We fought our own way, with words not blood,
But silence brings the same death, and there is no further reason to reject
A common ending.
What We Remember
Together we looked out against the Sea of Time, but we caught only glimpses of the past. So much has happened that will not be remembered. Overwhelmed and ashamed of my own smallness, I looked away. But Hasha caught my hand and pointed.
“This was the day the walls of Hannok fell,” she whispered. “I remember.” Her breath was lost on the wind, like so many memories swallowed by the yawn of time. What words, what wisps like anyone’s secure themselves in history? They are not the noblest, nor the most beautiful, nor even the loudest. They are what we find after the dust has settled.
The Shortest Day of the Year
She met him outside a taqueria wafting tortilla cooked fresh and earthy into the December air. It was the shortest day of the year, which she might’ve read as a sign, Continue reading
On the Run
Snuck through the backyard to your window. Moon’s coming out, and my shadow’s stretched like a murder-man’s against that white vinyl siding. Continue reading
Elevator Ghost
All the way on the sixteenth floor, tenants often hear singing from the elevator shaft. Sometimes blues, sometimes ballads, sometimes the voice gets down with the funk. Continue reading
The Fear of Drowning
He was a bullet swiftly guided through the azure pool. Twenty feet down and his chest tightened like a hammer pulled back to click. This was the farthest he’d dove since childhood, when dares were innocent and stakes unknown. Continue reading
Waiting by the Station
Because a gulf of time surrounds me, I sit at a coffee house across from the trains to await departure. Each engine roars into the station with a wash of passengers, comings and goings. Fresh surf. The wave rumbles. Then they’re gone. And I wait, and wait, my nose in latte foam. Jealous for their oceans, impatient for my own.
The header image is adapted from a photo by Flickr user RedBull Trinker.
The Story Coat
Logs crackle as Hasha watches the needle in her mother’s hand pierce and reemerge from the embroidered hem of her father’s coat. Threads weave their family’s history into the garment’s borders: the victory with the defeat, the joy with the loss.
“Here is the day your grandparents married,” says Mother, pointing to two silver doves. “And here is the night fire claimed their barn.”
“What happens when the border’s complete?” Hasha asks, wondering if her life will count towards the colorful threads in her family’s coats.
“Then we’ll begin again,” Mother smiles, and clips the threads between her teeth.
Trying something new this week with Six Sentence Stories. You can check out others’ takes on this week’s cue “BORDER,” here.
The Last Mermaids
We’d come to see the last of the Mermaids, called it a conservation trip but really we were just there to gawk. And point. Stand in the background of a CNN reporter’s camera and wave to our friends back home who had thought we were cruel to come so far just for a sideshow. Continue reading
The Isle of Brad
Brad was an explorer born six centuries too late. He’d known this from childhood, staging naval battles in the bathtub. Trading pinecones and beads with his action figures. But at forty-six there were no new worlds to conquer, save the mysterious space where paper jammed in the office copier. So Brad set out in his dingy boat, looking for a land to call his own. Continue reading
The Climb
That earthy, peaty smell like so many earthworms’ private fantasies richened the air that morning. The world was keeping secrets, and Jørgen was set on discovery. He sharpened his tools, mended his bag, and looked up the hill. The sun was high by now. He groaned.
Running
Thirty steps to the river. Twenty-nine back to the scrub brush. I pull myself by the limbs, up into the canopy.
Eight weeks since the bombs fell and I ran. I ran. I ran. The water runs here, too. There’s safety in likeness, so I thought. Continue reading
Curses (Infatuation)
“Sorry.” Her fingers grazed my back. I’d forgotten that feeling, like kittens climbing your spine and curling in your throat. Warm and matted and mewling. Disgusting, if you think about it. Who thinks about it at the time? Kittens in your throat. That’s gross. Continue reading
The Wordsy 
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