Fiction.

A fun exercise…

For my Brit Lit II take home final, in which I turned this Paul Muldoon poem into a piece of flash fiction.

 He knelt by the grave of his mother and father. The memory of something filled his mouth—dill, or tarragon, perhaps, one of those always freshly sprinkled over the bowls of something they cooked. He could barely tell one from the other. It suffocated him, the memory, the strength of it. And then he remembered her—the woman with the deep green eyes and elegant hands, her bony wrists and shoulders draped beneath the fur of a sea-otter. Where was it? Portland. Portland, Maine, or—yes, Portland, Oregon. But why should he remember her now, in front of the gray barren graves? The taste of her mouth, the small pickled gherkin she brought him once in a jar, laughing.

He remembered their long talks, about the Monarch butterflies and their milkweed-hunger.  How the earth and the sky would darken when they came down in their fluttering dark wings, so that you could barely tell one from the other. “A wing-beat that may trigger off the mother and father of all storms, striking your Irish Cliffs of Moher with the force of a hurricane.”

“Milkweed and Monarch ‘invented’ each other,” she told him.

He looked up, out of his memories, at the tiny white flowers in the shoots of the Cow’s parsley in the samovar in front of the grave. He’d mistaken his mother’s name, “Regan”, for “Anger.” As he knelt by the grave of his mother and father, he realized that he could barely tell one from the other.

(Source: paintedfictions)

#flash fiction #poetry
/4 notes /06:05 PM

You’d Be Surprised

I guess it’s this sort of wanting to be.

 I was walking in the park last night. It was dark—it gets dark so early now. I didn’t bring my headphones. I wanted to hear the calls of nature, the birds and the branches overhead. But mostly I just heard voices. Phone conversations and late first dates and commands to dogs. That was okay. But I couldn’t hear my own voice, the one that usually didn’t stop speaking inside my head. I was worried. I tried walking away from the people, walking faster, not paying attention. 

I almost ran home. I  shut the door and panted in the dark. I had forgotten to make the bed. There was the pulp stained glass of my orange juice from two days ago still on my bedside table. A basket full of unorganized laundry pressing against the half open closet door. I didn’t need the light to see. There was the overflowing tissues and the ripped up pages of old diaries in the trash. I would glue it all back together, I was half sure, half so tired that it couldn’t ever happen. 

My roommates weren’t home. I was grateful, for that, at least, but also scared, too. They hadn’t been back for a while. Was it some holiday I forgot? Last Christmas I stayed here alone because I had lost track of the days. Funny, right, how you never realize? I needed a new lampshade. The old one—what happened to it? One morning I woke up and it was gone, just the too bright glare of my energy efficient fluorescent bulb. 

I met a therapist once. She had such a lovely office. Calm pretty blue walls and an orchid. She had the loveliest cheeks. I told her that. And she looked unsure, then laughed. I wondered if she was transcribing our conversation into her spiral notebook. I shook her hand seriously at the end and told her I probably couldn’t see her again. She blinked fast and I saw the black mascara flakes in between her lashes.

I was okay, I promised her. I would write her a note telling her so if she couldn’t remember. I wrote her the note the next morning, on a folded piece of yellow legal paper. I never sent it though. I thought she was probably okay, probably meticulously watering her orchid. They are so hard to take care of.

I have trouble remembering the past, my childhood. People always have these stories. Like my old boyfriend. He told me a story about when he was three and was scared by the goats in the petting zoo and ran screaming and how his mother caught it on video and laughed and laughed at the tears streaked down his face. I wondered if he only remembered because of the video but he told me, no, he remembered it in person. 

I remember I had a birthday party once. I was wearing a very green dress with a very full skirt and neat white socks and shiny black shoes. The cake had green icing on it because it was my favorite color. I had trouble blowing out all the candles. And then the smoke scared me, that shy sliver from the burnt candle tip. I wouldn’t eat the cake because I thought it was poisoned.

Was that a real memory or was it because my mother told it to me so much? Whenever she got angry she yelled but after that she would look at me and tell me that story and her eyes looked small and hard.

My job though. I find it nice. I shelve things in the supermarket when it’s late and closed but the lights are so bright it’s like a mid summer afternoon. And I don’t have to smile at the customers and the others are so heavy lidded and filled with sigh that they rarely talk, and I don’t have to remember anything except where the cans and brands go and how they stack one on top of one another, perfect pyramids. 

I buy a lot of nail polish from drug stores. So many variations on the same shades! I line them at the edge of my desk against the wall and have my own little rainbow. But then the papers and receipts pile up on the desk so much they become invisible, or simply coated with dust. I hate the feel of dust on my finger tips. 

Sometimes my roommates look at me funny. Are you okay, they ask, I look at them and say yes, thank you, I am. I think they are okay too. Isn’t that the best way to be, just okay? My old boyfriend said he was in love with someone else. I met her a few months later, at the restaurant that he and I always used to go. When she laughed she opened her mouth so wide you could almost see down the length of her throat. When he watched her laugh I could see that he wanted to laugh too. 

(Source: paintedfictions)

#fiction #flash fiction #short story
/11 notes /11:43 PM

A Cold Night

The sidewalk was peppered with salt when she left the hotel, over preparation for predicted heavy snow that came only in a light, fluffy whiff during the afternoon. When she first came to New York she hadn’t known what it was, and her first winter she had asked a friend who couldn’t stop laughing, although it wasn’t the sort of thing you were just expected to know, was it? She’d grown up in a small suburb of LA where the temperature never dropped below 50. 

She wished that it had snowed, though. No matter how long she lived in the city that was the thing she never tired of, the transformation from concrete to plush white wonderland. She took a deep breath in of the fresh air and decided to walk. She was a few blocks from Central Park, and it was still early enough for a walk even in her very high heels. She had spilled her champagne on her leather gloves on the rooftop bar, and she tried to tuck her hands into her coat sleeves now, knowing that it looked at least a little ridiculous. You have beautiful hands, he had told her, and kissed each finger. Oh no, she laughed. Her fingers were almost skeletal, the bony knuckles sticking out awkwardly. You do, he insisted. But then of course he thought every part of her was beautiful.

The first time a boy had ever called her that was in high school and he was on Ecstasy and she was surprised and embarrassed. I’m not beautiful, she muttered. Cute, maybe. But beautiful belonged to the women with the slim long legs and high cheekbones. These days she was used to it, almost tired of it. Once a man had called her radiant. She had looked at him, hard. A Cosmo tip, he had laughed and told her. His ex girlfriend left copies lying around and he flipped through them for amusement. Call your girl radiant, not beautiful.

The park was empty and silent, and she took a seat on a bench near the 59th street entrance, facing the pond. Where did the ducks go at night? She smiled to herself and crossed her legs. When she looked up she could see the full moon, pierced by a few barren branches. It was a perfect postcard image. She wanted a cigarette.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat before the man with the dog passed by her. He caught her eye when she glanced up. Hello, he said. He was wearing one of those puffy jackets and had heavy gloves on. The dog was one of those terriers that looked a bit like a human, in a knitted red sweater. He had a warm, reassuring voice.

Hi. She smiled at him.

Lovely night, isn’t it? 

Yes. Marvelous, actually.

You look like you might be a bit cold.

She shrugged. Oh, I think my feet have frozen to the point where I can’t feel it any more. You have a cute dog.

Thank you. His name’s Fred.

Hi Fred. She withdrew a hand from her sleeve and reached down to scratch Fred’s ears. The dog let out a pleased, decisive bark. No chance you happen to have a cigarette, is there?

As a matter of fact, I do. The man grinned and pulled out a pack clumsily from a pocket. Wife doesn’t like it. Trying to quit…but you know what they say about old habits.

She laughed and said yes. He leaned in close to cup the flame from the wind. Thank you, she said, after she blew out her long, satisfying first drag.

You’re welcome. You know what, here, take the rest.

Oh I—

Please, you’d be doing me a favor. He winked, and she took the pack. Her fingertips were red from the cold. Well, enjoy your night.

I will. Thank you.

She played with the creased corners of the half full cigarette box and watched him and the dog trot away.

She kept the box, and remembered it, long after she forgot the champagne and the gloves and the man who had told her she had beautiful hands. 

(Source: paintedfictions)

#prose #flash fiction
/7 notes /09:15 PM

One More Night

I want it to be just like the song, she told him. She slipped out of her dress, and unhooked the back of her bra. She let him take her in, the slanted lines of her shoulder blades, the tiny goosebumps that sprang all over her skin. She had to shove and wiggle to get out of the skirt. She left on the black lace panties, the nude hold up stockings and heels. She had planned this. Standing and breathing in front of him. 

Okay. He said. He understood. They stood in his living room. There were sparse, black and white photographs behind him. There was the panoramic view of Manhattan behind her. There was a glass topped coffee table between them. He stepped around it and she stood still, waiting. He gripped the roots of her hair. He shoved her body against his. He breathed hard against her naked neck. She was trembling and trying to hide it. He didn’t kiss her lips, but devoured the rest of her, relentless, violent. He pinned her against the window, her ass pressing against the glass, her wrists held hard together in front her breasts.

She looked at him. There was empty lust. There was dead fire. There was a cruelty he had rarely seen. When she fucked him it was mechanical, furious. Her hair a tangled mess, the sweat on her arms. He was the one who couldn’t catch his breath. He wanted her to pause. Wrap her soft arms around him and press her face against his chest. Kiss him tender and play with his hair. 

They never made it to the bed. They lay tangled in front of the window. She lingered for only a second, then her weight was gone. She pieced together her outfit. He watched her, still naked on the floor. She stepped into her spiked heels. She looked back at him at the door. “Goodbye, then.”

He watched the door slam closed. He closed his eyes. He was surprised by how much it hurt. 

(Source: paintedfictions)

#flash fiction #prose #happy valentine's
/14 notes /09:23 PM

Glimpses

It was when he saw the naked, baby pink of the soles of her feet, and only then, that he felt relief, certain that he could love her. He was delighted when she slipped off her high heeled shoes, on park benches, in front of the faux fireplace in the living room. She propped them up whenever she could, curling and then stretching her painted toes. Sometimes she let out a soft, pleased sigh. That he loved too, wished that he could record, remember the rest of the time. When she pinned her hair into a glossy tight bun, when she snapped the metal lid of her lipstick shut, when she looked at him with a pity that wounded and drowned him, when she was as unavailable as the great marbled goddesses preserved between the silent museum walls.

(Source: paintedfictions)

#flash fiction #writing
/13 notes /09:10 PM

Ghost

“You have a ghost,” she told him, and they both paused to peer up at his ceiling, as if they could see it there. 

“It’s an old house.” He said. He had only moved in a few months ago and hadn’t fully unpacked. He couldn’t be blamed. He could be blamed, however, for bringing her here. At the bookstore where they met he had touched her shoulder because he was sure she was someone he knew, and later after the cafe, when he smiled and tilted up her face it was the fleeting memory of someone else he kissed. 

She sighed and burrowed close to him. “It doesn’t seem malicious.”

“How do you know?” He asked, his hand automatically reaching to hold her.

“We had a ghost in the apartment where I grew up. He lived in the attic, most of the time, though some late nights he got lonely and clanked the pans in the kitchen downstairs. He was a sad ghost, but not unkind. He jumped out the window when he was very young, eighteen, nineteen, maybe. He was sick and lonely and couldn’t speak well. He thought nobody loved him. But after he died he learned how wrong he was.” Her eyes were closed, her expression content yet serious. “I looked for him years later, in the local newspaper archives. I’m sure it was the same boy. Even his name matched how the ghost felt. He loved it when I played music. That was when I felt him the most, sometimes stirring by the window. Especially when I was sad. I think he didn’t want me to do what he did.”

“What do you know about the ghost here?” He asked.

She was quiet. The playlist he put on had reached its last song. He toyed with her hair, the familiar, tangled curls. “I don’t know yet.” She said, finally. “You should recognize it better. It’s not very hard. You just have to pay attention.”

He tried to pay attention but mostly he felt the other kind of ghost. Her scent and touch and the melody of the way she laughed haunted his head, while the real girl laid her head against his chest, and heard the steady rhythm of his uncertain heart. 

(Source: paintedfictions)

#prose #flash fiction #fiction
/34 notes /12:31 AM

Numbers

(a brief little story I wrote for Underwater New York, inspired by a bag of lottery tickets found in a pond in Prospect Park.)

She had been saving the lottery tickets for years. Every Monday, on her way home from work, skin tinted with the smell of Chlorox and bleach, fingers pruned, she stopped at a bodega to fill out the same set of numbers: 4, 22, 1, 13, 12, 5, for her mother’s birthday, her son’s, and her own. Her mother was dead, and her son, somewhere on the West Coast. He was traveling or playing music or trying to be an actor. He rarely called. Sometimes her memories confused her, and in her dreams she could not tell her husband from her son. Her husband had left her years ago. His drinking got worse after he lost the job and  his eyes filled with rage. She still had the scabs on her thigh, when he had rammed the edge of the table against her, the sharp of the wood cutting deep.

On Tuesday nights she waited in front of the TV, fingers poised over each number as they showed up on the screen. She did this always with calm and diligence, double checking just to make sure. She had to double check herself about other things, too. Her eyes weren’t what they used to be and her hands shook often. She didn’t think of herself as old, but perhaps it was the impression she gave to others. Sometimes people stood up to offer her a seat on the train. Maybe it was just her stooped back that gave her the look of carrying more weight than she was.

Mostly what she wanted was for her son to settle down with a nice girl. If she won the lottery she would buy them an apartment on the West side, with wood floors and big windows. She would move into a small room there and prepare their meals. She used to be a great cook, though these days she made the same thing every day: a hard boiled egg and tea in the morning, a  neat sandwich for lunch, and a vegetable casserole for the week for dinner.

One night, she couldn’t sleep. She lay awake for hours and listened to the sounds of cars outside. She felt her body like a coffin, ungainly and stiff, suffocating her. She clenched her eyes shut. She would go for a walk, she decided. She used to do it often. She pulled on a ragged coat and paused. She went to the drawer where she kept the neat stack of the lottery tickets, her history of failures. She stuffed them in a plastic bag that swung against her knees as she walked. She walked alone and slowly in the dark to the park where, once, long ago, the man she loved had gotten down on one knee and held out a ring that caught the rays of the sun. She could see it, her young, slim self and their long, hot kiss. She felt her young, slim self turning to watch her now. With relief, she met the girl’s eyes, and let the bag fall into the shallow pond. She did not look back.

The bag bobbed on the surface of the water, bloated and complacent until the daylight gave it new life, and someone walking past pointed and laughed.

(Source: paintedfictions)

#flash fiction #prose #lottery
/14 notes /10:02 PM