Microfictions.

And a farewell to my grandma.

“Pop” and Gloria Thompson.

Rest in peace, Gloria Thompson, who died last week at the age of 95. My grandma was a steady foundation for me in a shaky world, and I’ll miss her.

At the end, she had dementia, and that was hard. But in one of our last conversations, she said, “I don’t quite remember who you are, but I know that I love you.” How amazing is that?

I’ll carry her torch with me and light candles for as long as I can. I’ll feed squirrels. I’ll pet cats. I’ll be kind and empathetic. I’ll drink wine and laugh. I’ll recognize love.

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Selected microfictions -

Patterns - 3rd place in the Globe Soup monthly micro contest.

Danny walked up to the tree and placed his hand on the burl. “Looks like a mouth, don’t it?”

Peter shrugged. “Not really.”

“Sure it does—and look, up above it. Those two bumps in the bark look like closed eyes. Like any second they could open.”

Peter walked over and poked one of the knots with his finger; the husk parted, a glassy eye stared back at him.

Danny threw a coin at its iris.

Peter hacked at its roots with his brother’s pocket knife.

The neighbors came barking and fed the tree rocks until its eyes closed forever.

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The Tradition - 1st place in the Microdosing Holiday Contest.

Down the road from Kelly, a man is digging a hole in his backyard. It needs to be the right size. Kelly watches from her treehouse using the binoculars she got three Christmases ago. The man is weeping. The man is laughing.

The offering is heavy. Last year, he was stronger, and the year before that, stronger still. This year, he barely manages to carry it to the hole. He sings while he shovels; it’s the same song every year. Kelly knows the lyrics now. Maybe next year, she’ll offer to help. She sings along between bites of peppermint bark.

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Swallows - 1st place in the April 2024 Micro Competition through Globe Soup.

The dappled egg we found beneath the walnut tree stuck in my throat. I had to swallow hard. Sammy lost the bet, reluctantly handing over his pearl-handled pocketknife. He almost cried; I wiped my lip. At bedtime, my mother kissed my forehead and asked me how my day went. I told her fine, then coughed up a feather. She laughed. “Did you eat a canary?”

That night, I dreamt I could fly, and when I awoke, I was in the walnut tree. I cried out for my mother. She came out and banged on a pot with a spoon.

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The Writer’s Prayer

Every morning, I walk to the bridge.

On my way, small things move about under decaying leaves. I hear them, but I don’t always see them.

Every day.

When I arrive, I lean over the railing. The stream whispers an incoherent chant.

I toss pebbles into the water. And sticks. Whatever I got, really.

I climb down the bank, and lay down in the stream. It’s quick but shallow, most days.

Some days, I pretend to be the stick.

Some days, I’m the rock.

Some days I drown.

On the best days, I become the stream.

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Rinko

The departing vessel looked like a blossom carried by the wind.

Rinko took a breath; it was the first time she’d tasted the “Cotton cocktail,” as it was known back on Earth: oxygen, nitrogen, and an encapsulated fragrance that mimicked the scents of home.

A woman approached, removed her cowl, and handed Rinko a bouquet of pink flowers with blue pistils.

“They’re Hope Cherry,” she said, touching Rinko’s arm. “With hope, they never wilt.”

Cut flowers sent Rinko inward. Her mother called this sudden existentialism “the morbs.”

The ship dissolved into the star dotted sky. Rinko’s lip quivered. She wanted to yell out for her family, but at such a distance, how could the heart reach its mark?

The flowers began to wilt.

She closed her eyes and pretended she was standing in Tadasu no Mori.

For a moment, she bloomed.

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Time the healer

The hospitable embrace and singsong temperament were casualties of her pillaged beauty. Commanded comfort destroyed her; the milk soured; the nipple cracked. Eventually, the yolk stalk wilted, and the children built shuttles to take them to other tamable, if not congenial, mothers. Small-pock-rocket-ships full of lips searching for a tit.

Left alone, she sobbed and flooded the now deserted cities.

And screamed over her peaks and through her valleys.

Then, one day—a millennia.

Lofty trees sprouted. And the torrent calmed to a lilt. The song healed the nipple, and between cracks sprouted life anew, drunk on colostrum.

Mother, be well.

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Fleck

I was staring into the bathroom mirror, trying to figure out who the man looking back at me was. His face reminded me of someone familiar: a boy with the world at his feet; a boy without a nickel. Someone whole.

I turned off the light; this was no place for children.

In the dark, I could hear the boy weeping for me.

I turned the light back on and saw that insidious mark: the gold fleck in his iris.

I called the police and turned myself in. “I’ve committed an unimaginable crime,” I said. “I stole my life.”

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He ain’t heavy, he’s my boulder

One a devil, one a saint

One making goofy faces, one baring his teeth

One reciting affirmations, one yelling expletives

One a liar, one honest to a fault

One a lover, one alone

One living in the moment, the other with an eye on the grave

One brushing his teeth

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The pipe on my desk.

Before Nonno died, he’d tamp a bowl of the most delicious smelling vanilla tobacco and blow frosting-white clouds that filled the sky. He always acted ashamed of this habit, with the way he’d sneak out the backdoor to pray into his pipe.

He hid smoking like he hid the tattoo on his forearm—the ink he got during his time in the Navy. But to me, these characteristics are the flavors of life. And they’re important parts of my own life’s story.

Nonno’s hugs smelled like vanilla clouds.

Nonno died of cancer the day before my 19th birthday; I got his name tattoo’d on my forearm.

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CommaCon (Name credit:

Scoot

)

“Thats, hads, and dialogue tags—that’s what writers are made of.” Jackie looked out across the hunched, red-cloaked crowd in Conference Room D.

She continued, “Poor dears, if only they had an ear, maybe they wouldn’t produce such drivel. They blunder away, expecting thunderous praise—don’t you dare tell them the truth! Their prose is dull, their story a flop, and their incessant adverbs—annoyingly so, boringly so—beg to be chopped! You’ll dash their dreams, and wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? Nay. Drown them in red!”

“Chop! Cut! Kill!” the CommaCon attendees chanted.

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Hotel Utah (Nonfiction)

Dust falling through low autumn sunlight

At the Hotel Utah

You were tall and kind

There was a thread, unknown to me

Did I break it?

I went to work a wedding, you hung back

I watched two strangers marry

You killed yourself

This is the part where I talk of hope

This is the part where I give the reader something 

good. A comfort. 

Dust falling through low autumn sunlight. 

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