Category: flash fiction

Paradise in a Bowl | Derek Harmening

This recipe feeds two. Store-bought noodles are fine, but if you’re cooking to impress, you’ll want to start from scratch.

1. Gather all ingredients. Mix the flour, eggs, oil, salt, and water until a smooth, thick dough forms. Knead the dough gently, the way you used to rub Sara’s back on the sofa, your thumbs working the hollows of her shoulder blades while, face-down between two cushions, she would groan, “Jesus fuck that hurts, Owen. Keep going.” You want the dough to be smooth, elastic, springy—like you. You are resilient, quick to bounce back, not easily bruised.
2. Wrap the dough in Saran Wrap and refrigerate until slightly cool. You will know the dough is ready when it feels like the air on a mild spring night, crisp and damp and lush with potential, the way it felt that twilit April you and Sara walked beside Lake Michigan, fingers entwined, as she turned to you on the stone revetment and said, “I want you to meet my parents.”
3. Roll and cut the dough into your desired pasta shape, such as bowtie or rotini. Avoid abstractions, like the love line on Sara’s palm, or the imprint she left on the twin-sized bed each morning, careful not to wake you on her way to accounting class. These shapes are vague, and imperfect, and unlikely to hold.
4. In a large saucepot, boil two quarts of water over medium heat. Add a pinch of salt.
5. Text Sara. Let her know you’re excited to see her. Don’t be weird. You might say, “It was nice running into you at Colin’s party last week. Thanks for agreeing to dinner on such short notice.” Avoid saying, “I miss you. I’m in therapy now. I hope this isn’t weird, but I’m cooking the same dish we ordered at Tomasco’s on your birthday, the one you called ‘paradise in a bowl’? I know neither of us believes in God, but maybe it’s fate that we ran into each other at Colin’s party last week.”
6. Better yet, don’t text Sara. She said she’ll be here at seven. You can talk then.
7. Add pasta to the boiling water. Cook until noodles are al dente, a phrase you only know thanks to that Duolingo course you and Sara took together but gave up on after two weeks’ tepid commitment. Things were going badly then, and you had hoped that by cultivating some new, shared passion, you would manage to narrow the widening gulf between you both. You even bought a travel guide to Italy. You half-believed it might really happen: you’d fly coach to Venice, feed each other mouthfuls of prosciutto, test your fluency on the locals. When you mentioned gondola rides, Sara bit her thumb and said, “You know I get motion sick on boats.” She went back to scrolling Instagram, and you put the book on a shelf in the back of your closet.
8. In a large skillet, heat the butter, garlic, and one cup of dry white wine. No need to break the bank, here—just use one of those leftover bottles of Chenin Blanc, the inexpensive ones you bought when Sara passed her CPA exam and you invited some friends over and you all drank and laughed and danced along to Paula Abdul until late in the evening. Simmer until the smell of alcohol fades, and with it the image of Sara that night, standing by the mantle, teeth bright, candle-lit, already further from you than you knew.
9. Ping. Check your phone. Don’t let the sauce burn while you read, re-read, and gradually process Sara’s text. Stand very still. Wait for the ringing in your ears to pass.
10. Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce. Stir in the cherry tomatoes and button mushrooms you bought at the farmer’s market in Hamlin Park. You and Sara had one of your first dates there; she introduced you to easter egg radishes, and you fed her rosemary cashews. At some point, a neighbor’s springer spaniel slipped its collar and bolted into traffic. You lured the dog to safety with a palmful of cashews, its sandpaper tongue grazing your knuckles. “You’ve got the magic touch,” Sara said, pressing two fingers to your wrist. The sky that day was a bright, eye-watering blue, the clouds like tiny explosions.
11. Reply to Sara. Tell her it’s fine. You get where she’s coming from. You’d thought it would be nice to catch up, for old times’ sake, but now you realize it was improper of you to ask. Things are still raw. Really, this is what’s best for you both.
12. Serve the pasta in two bowls—because, despite everything, you can’t help thinking that maybe she will have a change of heart. That perhaps, even now, she’s on the platform, waiting for the next train, sighing through her nose as some shaggy-haired busker plays “Walking in Memphis” on his battered Yamaha. God, how Sara loathed that song. She isn’t a smoker, but if it came on at the bar, she’d bum a Newport just to escape it. Garnish the pasta with grated Parmesan and freshly cracked pepper, to taste. Take your first bite. Accept that it tastes nothing like Tomasco’s. Wait for a soft knock on the door. Imagine what you both will say. “You won’t believe what song was playing on the El,” Sara will begin. “Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea,” you’ll counter. “Don’t you dare,” Sara will laugh, as you hold the sauce-flecked spoon to your lips and start caterwauling about blue suede shoes and Delta Blues. You’ll keep things light at first, and easy, and maybe, after a cheap bottle of Chenin Blanc, you will begin to talk about the things that matter.

Bonus audio of Derek reading his piece:

about the author:

Point the Way | Melissa Fiegel

Reese looks at the hole in the facade, tempted. There could be animals in there, hiding from the winter. Old pieces of broken bottles. Jagged little teeth. Yet, she still shines her phone light inside and is met, not with eyes, but a set of tiny objects: a photograph, a yellow ribbon, and a folded piece of paper. Reaching in, she wraps her gloved hand around the photograph and ribbon and pulls them out. The note, whatever it says, is too far away. 

It’s too bad she will never get to read it.

***

Reese sits at her kitchen table, willing her sister to respond to the text. Sobriety is no longer shiny. At first, each day was a mountain she was proud to climb, but now Reese is sick of climbing mountains. There are only so many Lemon Blackberry flavored waters someone can take. When she is this bored, she worries her 211 days will all be for nothing. 

Her fingers tap, tap, tap on the cheap wooden surface but cannot speed up time. Of course Elizabeth wouldn’t respond right away. She has her husband and kids, dinners to make and activities to plan. Reese doesn’t like to keep too much on her plate at once.

Do you know who this is? I found this picture under mysterious circumstances and am intrigued lol. It says it is from 1997 so she might have been around your age in school.

Reese glances at the faded photo again. In it, a girl stands in a yard, bright yellow earrings hanging from her ears, matching exactly the tone of her over-sized yellow sweater and hair ribbon.  She is smiling with her head cocked slightly to the left, a look that reads as pleasure, energy, and fascination. Love. On the back in handwritten letters it reads, “Me, 1997, before.”

Reese gets up and puts her plate in the sink. The sound echoes in the house and she worries that the plate has cracked. She does not check.

Hopefully, she thinks, Theo is in bed by now. She could text Troy and ask but doesn’t want to talk to him. Theo’s room sits filled to the brim with books, toys, and his new bed. Even though it is dark, the whole thing is lit in a vacant glow, the streetlights bouncing their rays off the snow and into the room. It is full, but it is empty.

She goes to grab the ribbon from the table.  What in this person’s life drove her to shove her girlhood away in a tiny hole, never to look at again? Did she mean it is as time capsule or a tomb? Reese knows she is being too empathetic, but it is so easy for her mind to fill in the blanks, to fill in the girl’s trauma with her own. Grabbing the ribbon, she walks into the bathroom. The lights are brutal on her eyes, but they are honest. Reese is gray hairs and crow’s feet and ashen skin.

She delicately braids her hair for bed and ties the ribbon around its edges. As clear as day, as brutal as the lights, she thinks: maybe we can help each other.

Her phone dings and she runs back to the table.

Omg yea I know her. Where did you find this? Her name was Emily something. She was a year older but she got pregnant in her senior year. I know a few years later her and her son got in a car accident. They both died. Im surprised you don’t remember it was kind of a big deal. Rumor was that she was drunk but idk how true that is. 

Why are you asking though? Is everything okay?

***

Reese lays in bed, thinking the ABCs to push everything else away. This woman killed herself and her own child. The thought sends another chasm straight into her chest. Theo was not in the car when Reese got her DUI, but the distinction is minimal. He could have been. Reese is cold under the blankets. The oblivion of sleep had been so urgent that she didn’t even have time to put on pajamas. 

She reaches to her hair and touches the yellow ribbon, her heart aching for Emily and for her son. The ribbon feels like ice, and when she pulls her hand away, her fingertips feel extra smooth, like they have been burned. 

There is one moment, as soon as she is drifting off, with the soft blanket brushing the bottom of her nose, that she believes she is safe. That everything is fine.

But when the coldness presses against her, it feels like a body. Hard, its curves matching hers. She throws the blankets back and flips the lights on. Obviously, nothing is there. 

What could be there?

Just herself. 

Her feet carry her to the kitchen and to the fridge door, reaching for a sparkling water, something for her hands to do so her mind has a chance to slow down. It isn’t enough.

The back door beckons and suddenly it is open, her body eager to feel the rush of cold. The breeze is not enough, her body pushes for more, so she grabs her long winter coat, slips on her boots, and walks outside into the night.

The biting air instantly pushes all other thoughts from her body. The moon is high in the sky, pointing the way, casting a bright light over the peaceful night. 

In the garage, on a back shelf, in a box, under old pieces of chalk, it sits. Waiting, in case she has friends over or throws a party. For someone else.

It was true and it was not true. 

Then, she is at the kitchen table, pouring one shot, then another, and she is finally warm inside, after so long. In her mind she pictures a white car against a tree. Mossy hands wrapping around it, crushing, embracing. Welcoming her home. 

Bonus audio of Melissa reading her piece…

about the author:

Catharsis | Georgia Maull-Keyser

The women’s health clinic put up a corkboard in the waiting room. A sheet of printer paper had been tacked to the top of the board with a simple message: Let it out. If you’re feeling it, another woman is probably feeling it, too. (Please no profanity). 

Affixed to the bottom of the board were three small trays: one with blank index cards, one with an assortment of pens, and one with thumbtacks. 

In a week, four cards had been added. In two weeks, fifteen. By the end of the month, there were more than thirty. 

Most were brief. Some rhymed. All were poetry. 

MY BASIC NEEDS, the very first card up proclaimed, followed by something that resembled a hastily written shopping list: SLEEP, WATER, FOOD, AIR, LOVE, PROTEIN, PROTEIN, FIBER, FIBER, FIBER, FIBER, FIBER.

In a swirling cursive hand: Would that men could feel the cramps I suffer. Someone had tacked a card next to it and written: Wouldn’t it be great if scientists studied women’s health?

One card asked: Is my headache because of dehydration, perimenopause, anxiety, or the fall of democracy? A card answered in vibrant red ink: yes. Another card elaborated: No amount of anxiety meds can counteract the dumpster fire of a world we live in.

An index card with drops of coffee staining its blue ink lamented: I’m great at watering plants but not myself. Someone replied: Coffee counts! Another commiserated: I’ve been dehydrated for thirty years. Anyone else? A fourth added: No one drank water before the turn of the millennium except if it was straight out of the hose and only in the summer. 

In glittery, purple ink, someone wrote: I’m so tired of being tired. I would sleep for a whole year if I could. Someone added a red heart on the bottom along with two words: same, girl.

Why didn’t anyone tell me I needed to start weightlifting a decade ago?, a card ranted. If you’re reading this and are younger than thirty, start right now! Save your bones. A card in a frantic script asked: WHAT DO YOU MEAN!? Another card answered: Look up osteoporosis. Another card: THANK YOU!

On one card: I hate my cell phone. Every time it buzzes, I assume it’s someone I don’t know wanting to scam me or someone I do know needing to tell me a family member has died. Someone in that loopy marriage of print and cursive replied: I felt relieved when my dad died because it meant my mom wouldn’t be calling anymore to tell me he was in the hospital again.

The receptionist Helen’s favorite card said: I unknowingly rawdogged ADHD for my entire life until I started perimenopause. What the actual fuck  frick. Sorry for swearing. She liked the card for the cacophony of hearts and exclamation points others had added to it. She didn’t know that the OB-GYN had written it. Helen had added a card of her own that said: I only have two speeds. Awake and Asleep. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine. 

Jennifer the OB-GYN loved the card that said: I like being alone but I hate silence. Someone had added: Thank god for podcasts. Another chimed in: Yes! My therapist calls it a sensory void. 

When there was no more space, the staff added a second board. They all agreed that it didn’t seem right to take the cards down.

I started hormones last year and love my body for the first time, a card said. I was not ready for the breast pain, though. Or the crying. Another replied, I have PCOS and feel the same way! A second reply in fluorescent green highlighter shouted: IN DA CLUB, WE ALL FAM! (Warm compresses are super soothing!)

My boss, a card complained, is bro-y in a bad way. Welcoming any and all suggestions for acts of microfeminism. Petals of replies bloomed from this card in the course of a week. 

Make she/her your default pronouns for talking about someone new. “The new manager starts tomorrow.” “Wonderful! What’s her name?” “Ted.”

Add “male” when describing a man’s occupation, especially for high-level jobs. “Jeff’s a male doctor. Craig’s a male engineer.” 

Refer to male celebrities as “the husband of [wife’s name]” whenever possible. 

Ask him to explain sexist jokes he makes. 

If he gets a short haircut, tell him you like his pixie cut.

Refer to groups of men as boys. 

The clinic had to add a third board. 

Then a wonderful thing happened. 

This board, intended for catharsis and validation, transformed into a space to uplift and empower. Business cards for life coaches, job recruiters, and headhunters. Flyers for women’s open mic nights and women-writers book clubs. Coupons and discount codes for woman-owned restaurants and businesses. Invitations for women entrepreneur happy hours and an event called “Gender Euphoria: A Night of Pampering, Womanhood, and Community.” Cardboard boxes were placed beneath the board for can drives to benefit the domestic violence shelter. 

A new problem presented itself: the clinic had no more wall space in the waiting room. 

Regina, the phlebotomist, always the innovator, found their solution. She brought large shadow boxes into the clinic and carefully transferred the contents of the first two boards into them. And then she mounted the shadow boxes to the ceiling in the exam room, directly above the exam table.

“So patients can see them when they lie down,” Regina grinned. “They can see them and know that they aren’t alone when they might feel it the most.”

Everyone in the clinic agreed that they could figure out later what to do when they ran out of ceiling space.

Bonus audio of Georgia reading her piece…

about the author:

The Hanging God | Luke Electious

Telephone wires were hung across the United States in 1877. Nietzsche declared God dead in 1882. I’ve long thought the best way to die would be with telephone wires. God strung Himself to them, pulled the lines apart and hung Himself from the wooden beams. I don’t know when He did it, but my phone call with a sex operator in New York was broken up last week, so I suppose it must’ve been then. Nietzsche saw it, I’m sure.

Nobody knew what to do with God’s body. The first man who tried to unravel the wires from around Him died the moment he touched Him. God looked so awfully pretty hanging there, off a dirt road in eastern California, that the mayor of the town three miles over declared God’s corpse as city property. Before long, He became a tourist attraction. Folks holding avocado smoothies and fake Gucci sunglasses bought from Chinese immigrant workers in the streets of Los Angeles would drive in from the coast to take a picture of the Hanging God, post it in their weekly photo dump. 

I went once on a Sunday morning after church. The communion wafer was dirty that day, soiled with the sweat of the priest’s fingers, and I figured I’d have a word with God himself about it. I couldn’t say anything when I got there, though, just looked up and stared at the Hanging God. 

They charged me twenty bucks to take a picture, and another five to park alongside the road. The mayor had said they were using the money coming in from Hanging God to build new telephone wires, with which to replace God’s noose. Nobody believed him, of course. His daughter was the only one in town who knew what cashmere felt like. 

Three days passed, and the loud neopsychos who’d been waiting on the side of the road for Hanging God to pick himself up after seventy-two hours, to jump down to the road and declare us all saved, finally went home, muttering to each other about a Corinthians verse. I gave it an extra day, because I thought God might’ve forgotten to come back and would remember soon, but nothing changed. I started going to daily mass. The police said God killed Himself, but I think it was my fault. They never did install new telephone wires.

Bonus audio of Luke reading his story…

about the author:

Girls Like Me | Christy Hartman

Girls like me cling to youth. Our hands claw at hyaluronic acid life preservers, as our sea-glass husbands tumble gently into middle-age. We hide our post-partum bodies behind Lexapro and filtered Instagram posts.  It will be our turn again someday.

Girls like me can shred your self-esteem with a lingering look in the Costco line. We narrow our eyes at the grease stains on your stretch denim, then at your straining button fly. We conjure a tiny smirk at the corner of our plump lips — you suck in your stomach and pull at your oversized shirt.

Girls like me pick at our salads while our boyfriends tear at their rare sirloin like Vikings celebrating their latest plunder. No need to ask if we want dessert. We marry handsome men who proposition us with two-carat rings while they ogle the waitress’s ass. Your table of espresso martinis watches us with green-eyes and knowing glances.

Girls like me are toughened by mothers. Mothers who pinch rolls of skin tumbling over our ballet skirts and bra straps, clicking their tongues like scissors snipping at our loose threads. Girls like me twirl in new dresses before fathers who look through our glass bodies at Monday night touchdowns.

Girls like me are babies with wild ringlets and rosy cheeks. She’s so pretty. What an angel. A perfect doll. Passed from arms to arms, girls like me reach for bright lights and vibrant colours, finding beauty in everything. 

Girls like me were prayed for. Girls like me were wanted. Girls like me were loved.

about the author:

First Ice | Mary Ellen Gabriel

Skate where the puck is going and you’ll be ready for the shot, said my father. I was more than ready for it, even though I was only six, and small for my age. My father cut the stick handle down to fit me. He did the same for my brothers, who were younger, though not much smaller, than me. On Saturday mornings we walked to the pond, the four of us, on the packed snow trail through the pine woods. We carried our sticks at our sides; my father called it the farmer’s carry. Our skates we laced together and wore over our shoulders. Duke came with us, his yellow fur standing out thick, his hot breath pluming past his ears. Sometimes we met our friends on the trail, and their fathers, and the bubbly feeling would well up in me, the feeling that everyone around me was happy. We lived outside Medfield, Massachusetts on lots recently carved from the woods and fields. The walk to the pond seemed long; I wonder how far it really was? 

If frigid weather came before the snow, the pond’s surface shone clear and black as a dance floor. First ice, the fathers called it. They tried to maintain it as long as possible, shoveling after storms, sweeping away any stray leaves, or “melters”, which warmed the ice they fell on as they decomposed, forming treacherous little pockets.  They always went first, the fathers—tossing their boots aside, lacing up their skates, rocketing off the bank like birds released from a cage. The first “clock” of the puck made Duke bark, his deep woof joining the fathers’ eager shouts. My fingers numbed before I could finish helping my youngest brother tie his skates. My father spun around us, lazy and graceful as a broad-winged hawk on a current.  Shaky but eager, we rode sideways on our blades, our knees knocking together, our sticks nosing out, sniffing the ice for the puck. Look alive, boys, look alive! my father called, his words ringing out joyous on the winter air. He wanted us to skate with our sticks up, push our bottoms out, cross one leg over the other when we made our turns. He gave up on my brothers—they were too young—but he tried to teach me these things, and I practiced over and over in a corner of the pond where the little kids had their own net, my eyes yearning after my father even as he dug the ice with one toe and skimmed off to join the men’s game. 

On the coldest days—which were not the darkest days but instead came in February, when the light was returning and the fathers kept us going until the moon rose and there was woodsmoke on the air—we could hear the pond’s ice groaning, and once we saw a slender fissure race across it, heard a shot and felt the pond shiver with agony. That day, my big toe froze white like a new potato. My youngest brother cried and collapsed in a heap on the bank, and my father sent him home on the moonlit trail with Duke for company.  

Skate where the puck is, and you’ll miss your chance. Skate where it’s going, and all you have to do is take the shot. It was years before I knew Wayne Gretzky said it first. All wisdom, all grace, came from my father. 

For him, the puck was going to Atlanta. He left us at the end of that winter, heading south to sign a lease with the girlfriend he’d met while traveling for work. My mother took to her bed and various relatives arrived to make sure we boys got fed and sent to school on time. By the time she recovered enough to take up the burden of single parenthood, we were moving away from that place of piney trails and woodland ponds, of old stone fences buried in leaves. I never saw the pond again after that last frigid day, when the ice fired its warning shot and my toe froze and Duke guided my brother home on the moonlit trail. Knowing how quickly wetlands are drained and filled in, I doubt it’s still there, and even if it were, I would not know how to find it again. I’m glad I didn’t know it was the last time, and that I remember the day just as it was, full of fiery breath and freezing wind and the drive to skate, skate, skate into the next realm.

Thirty years after my father abandoned us, I held my newborn son and looked deep into his eyes. I had one game plan for fatherhood: be different from my dad. When I felt my boy’s papery new fingers close around mine, a silent crack opened in my heart. I remembered the earliest days with my father on the pond—before I knew anything about skating or anything else—how he bent at the waist, held my gaze and let me grasp his two index fingers like levers, while he traveled slowly backwards, drawing me towards him across an alien surface. The molecules parted under the pressure of my blades and the sensation of gliding traveled up through my feet and legs, into my belly. I was moving towards my father, but I would never reach him; that was not the point. The point was to imagine myself in some future state, some place other than where I stood awkward and trembling, barely able to trust that the glazed surface would hold me up. 

Bonus audio of Mary Ellen reading from her story:

about the author:

The Evening Train | Christopher R.A. Adams

“Mr. Ross is silent.” He had been like that since he came into hospice care; Helen claimed he didn’t even chew or cough. I thought she was being mean. Still, that was the only care instruction on his sheet: “Mr. Ross is silent,” and I hadn’t visited his room yet. Those four words repeated in my head as I approached his door with his dinner: sweaty, bland meat, bleached mashed potatoes, and a pre-opened pudding cup rumbling on a cart with a dozen siblings. 

I knocked softly and waited for an answer. (I am not sure why; he was silent—he wouldn’t have said a word.) 

“Hurry, Helen! I don’t have all day.” I froze, but Mr. Ross came to the door to thaw me. 

“Oh, you’re not Helen,” he apologized with a slightly bowed head. “Still! Come be quick, please.” He opened the door wide enough for the whole cart, but I only took the tray with his name. 

The room was stark white. The only reprieve was a TV, which the patient had left off, and two cheap photography prints: one was of a beach that no one who entered that room ever got to see in person, and the other was of a forest infested with lumberjacks. His bed was tidy, and the rolling tray beside it held his keys, wallet, and wintergreen mints. Only dust had touched these items in the three weeks the patient had been here. 

“You can keep that,” he pointed at the tray, “I don’t have time for that. Thank you.” He waved his hands, casting the tray away with a spell, and turned towards the visitor’s chair where an ancient leather case yawned. 

“You need to eat, Mr. Ross,” I insisted as he fiddled with the items in his case: four pairs of pants, the same number of shirts and briefs, a bag of toiletries, a knife from ‘Nam, and a photo album. “No, no. I have a train to catch. And for that price, there better be a meal.”

I decided to investigate, so I could update his care comments: “They don’t allow knives on public transport.” 

He shrugged and put a Walkman in the case. “Maybe… it’s all new to me, so I’ll take anything I might need.” He locked the case, then turned with a saggy smile and nudged his glasses up. 

“Where’s the train going?” Was this an old memory shoving its way to the surface? 

Another shrug. “I’m not sure. It’s going west, that I know. But I hope spring is nice there; if not, I’ll come back here in March whether they like it or not.” He paused. “I never liked trains.” 

“Where’s here?” I asked, ready for another mental note. He gave me an are-you-stupid look and pointed down. When I looked up from where he pointed, he was wiping his cheeks and apologized. “The train has me stressed.” 

Mr. Ross turned away and began carefully verifying every photo in the album he kept in the suitcase. On the cover was an old woman with a gap in her teeth. “Who’s that?” I asked. 

“That’s my Suzy, my sunflower. She’s out West. I’m going to meet her there.” As he flipped through, I caught glimpses of trees, flowers, and birds: not a single human except Suzy the sunflower. 

“Why those pictures? Why no family or friends?” 

“They’re all out west now; I suppose I fell behind. I’ll see them with my eyes, so I don’t need photos anymore. But I don’t know if they have trees out that way. Or if they’re green and dance in the spring breeze? Or if they are full of life? Do the birds nest in them, and the critters call their bark their home? I’m bringing the photos just in case they’re different, so I can remember what a lively tree is like.” 

I was still trying to assemble every detail for my notes later when he looked at my tray. “You’re very good at talking; you’ve got me distracted. My train will be leaving at any time, and my family is expecting me. Please leave the meal if you must, and I will go.” He zipped his case and hung his glasses on his collar. I was hesitant. I didn’t need another escaped patient. But he waved at the tray again, and I decided to go along with it. 

As I turned, he took up his case and entered his bed, shoes and all. He called out to my back, “Close the door too, it’ll be here any time.” I agreed. I put the tray down, pulled the door’s whistling hinges shut, and the wheels of my cart trollied on to the next patient.

about the author:

As If Nothing Is Burning | Wasima Khan

The kettle clicks off at exactly 6:48. The whistle is broken, so you have to listen for the silence, that sudden hush of effort ending. You get up, pour water over coffee grounds, stare out the window. The buses are already groaning down the hill. In the balcony below, Mrs. Wahida is brushing her son’s hair, her mouth moving in a slow recitation. Maybe a prayer. Maybe just a to-do list. You can’t tell.

You check your phone. Notifications. A few headlines.

Thousands Flee Amid Escalating Violence.

Confirmed Death Toll Surpasses 10,000.

The thumbnail for the second one is a pile of limbs blurred into dust. You scroll past it, heart squeezing, then quickly forgetting. You open the weather app instead. Rain today. Heavy by noon.

You imagine sending a text to Amal, remembering how she had a way of turning headlines into human voices. She once translated a poem scrawled in charcoal on a refugee tent. She would call your silence by its true name.

But you don’t text her. You haven’t in months. Not since the last argument. You said, “It’s not like we can do anything,” and she said, “That’s what they count on.”

You sip your coffee. It is bitter. You put more sugar in it than you used to.

In the city, life thrums. A construction site is tearing into the earth across from your office. The jackhammer pounds like a memory you’d rather not have. Men in yellow helmets pass around thermoses, laughing. A truck backs up, beeping like a child imitating distress.

Your colleague, Martin, arrives with a story about his dog. Something about diarrhea and a missing chew toy. You nod, you laugh. He never asks about the news, and you never volunteer it. 

There was a time, you recall, when people would say “Never Again” with the kind of sincerity that builds churches. Now it’s just again.

You once made the mistake of bringing it up during lunch. The room fell into that particular kind of silence. A silence that protects itself. One woman said, gently, “I think it’s important to take care of our mental health too.” And you nodded. Of course. Of course. Compassion has limits. Everything has limits.

You go to the supermarket after work. You stand in front of the tomatoes. You remember a story you read about a man who was shot while trying to save his sister, who was pregnant. He had a name. You forget it now. You reach for the plumpest tomato.

In line, a little girl behind you is crying. Her mother hushes her in Spanish. The man in front of you wears a shirt that says “Stay Kind.” He’s buying wine and birthday candles.

The woman at the till smiles and says, “Have a good evening.” You say, “You too.” You do not ask where she’s from, although her accent reminds you of a region you saw on the map this morning, painted in red.

At night, you do not watch the videos. But you read the comments underneath.

Where is the humanity?

Why is the world silent?

We cannot look away.

And yet, you do. You look away. You take off your socks. You stretch your back. You brush your teeth. You click the lamp off. The room is dark and still. Somewhere across the world, someone is screaming. But your windows are double-glazed. And the city hums on.

You dream of oceans. Always oceans. Not the peaceful kind, but the vast, cruel kind that carry bodies too far from names. You wake up drenched, heart galloping like hooves over mud. You whisper into the dark, “I didn’t mean to forget.”

But forgetting is not a decision. It is a symptom. Of distance. Of safety. Of privilege. Of being able to choose whether to remember.

You’re torn between the life you have built and the life that is burning elsewhere. The ache of belonging and betrayal sitting in the same room, drinking the same tea.

The next morning, the kettle clicks off at 6:48. You pour your coffee. You scroll your phone.

Survivors Describe Horror.

You pause. You read. The article names the village, names the bodies, names the silence that followed. Your chest tightens. You think of Amal. You type, I read the article. You send it. Small, maybe. But a beginning. A crack in the wall of forgetting.

Outside, it starts to rain. Not the kind that cleanses. Just the kind that falls, and falls, and falls.

about the author: