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.
Looking for more micro?
Fleck
I was staring in 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.
The Stars in the Sky are a Mirror
They praise themselves, and that vanity—that self-lust—is the only distraction I need to do what it is I’ve come all this way to do.
Swallows
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?”
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.
Breaking my heart with your words. Thank you.
Short and sadly sweet.
"...but at such a distance, how could the heart reach its mark?"
Loved this!