Category: micro monday

Door-to-Door | Joli Huelskamp

I open the door to a smiling girl, sixteenish, summer-camp-counselor wholesome, carrying a clipboard and a huge umbrella. She hands me a glossy brochure. “Libby Conrad for Commissioner”. Red, white, and blue. A photo of the candidate posed in the midst of her sunny family. 

“Libby Conrad has deep roots here,” says the girl. “She’s owned the Front Street Pharmacy for twelve years and is very active in the community. She’s dedicated and hardworking.”

The girl can’t explain exactly what a county commissioner does. She can’t name her candidate’s opponent or even the election date. She refers me to the website listed on the glossy brochure. I wonder about Libby Conrad’s organizational skills, deploying her canvassers without this basic knowledge.

Still, I have to admire this girl for being out on a miserable, rainy night. Surely she’d rather be inside, hanging with her friends. And she’s cheerful, poised, enthusiastic. Did I ever have that perky attitude, that sense of civic duty?

“Would you like a sign for your yard?” she asks as she’s leaving.

The people across the street have placards up year-round, more than enough political signage for the entire neighborhood. I decline politely.

I finish up the dinner dishes. Carrying out the trash, I hear shrill voices across the street and know instantly. What a treat to have the enemy delivered right to your door. I should have warned the girl.

Brainless bitch! Spreading venom you don’t even understand! Stupid little hypocrite!

You can’t think for yourself, you spineless sheep! Baa! Baa! Baa!

Worthless, toxic scum! Go back to the hole you crawled out of!

The girl sobs, walks back down their driveway, her hand up as if to protect herself. At the street, she tries to remember which way to go. The rain keeps pouring as she, someone’s daughter, stumbles down the sidewalk, crying, struggling with her umbrella, the glossy leaflets falling off her clipboard into the muddy gutter.

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Thirteen Black | Sanum Patel

“Red, red, red!” Everyone cheered, flinging crystal glasses of champagne into one another, grabbing me by my pastel-brown suit jacket. The dealer loaded a cheap plastic ball into the roulette wheel as a woman in a sparkly silver dress eye-fucked me into serenity. “Place your bets!” he hollered.

“Red!” I shouted back, shoving my $287,000 of life savings into the table. The crowd roared, hands raining down on me—slapping my back, nails rubbing into my neck.

“Don’t forget me,” the silver woman smirked, angling her lips toward mine, the scent of Hennessy curling into my nose. The soft feel of that cold Glock drifted into my mind, still lingering in my beat-up green pickup truck. Biding its time for the sweet release of black.

“Don’t forget me either,” I said softly, my lips almost pressed onto hers, the thought of my ex-wife’s cackling laugh nearly thinning into whisper. Closing my eyes, I tasted red—her smug smile dissolving into ash, custody papers ripping into the air.

The dealer shot the ball, rippling up and down the wheel. Red, black, red, black. The odd green swirling in. Every roll held a blissful future — the world collapsing into nothing or blooming under my palms. It wasn’t a fool’s bet. It was the opposite of marriage.

The silver woman rested her head on my shoulder, pulling me in. I looked into her eyes as I caught the soft glimmer of black, settling on the wheel. Smirking, I leaned in, grabbing her by her waist, my Glock smiling from the truck. She kissed me back as I devoured her lips, her raven lipstick claiming me. My hands found their way on her paper-thin throat, almost grasping—when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

Opening my eyes, the crowd was utterly silent. A man in a flamingo shirt covered his mouth, pointing at me.  

“Thirty-six… red,” the dealer called out. 

Hennessy drained from my veins. The crowd erupted in a frenzy, thudding at my back, reverberating up my spine as the silver woman cackled, rubbing at my groin. I sat still, vision blurring as red filled the edges. My ex in a white dress. My boy in a suit too big for him, calling another man Dad. The dealer already reloading the ball.

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You Ask Your Husband if He’d Do it All Over Again | Victoria Melekian

You know, marry you, and you see the small O of air he swallows before he says sure, but he doesn’t look at you.

You tell your sister you feel like you’re just hanging around, waiting for the next thing to happen. She pours two shots of tequila and says to stay in the now: six empty beer bottles, salt shaker, vase of white daisies. She lines up three bottle caps on the kitchen table and says, “Here’s your options: do nothing, follow him, leave.” You like doing nothing, staying in the moment: two shot glasses, crumpled napkin, blue tablecloth. 

You slosh home with a head full of tequila. Your husband’s asleep on the couch, his arm around the dog. The eleven o’clock news fills the living room: drought, drive-by shooting, sports scores. You turn off the TV and whisper, “I’m leaving” into his ear. 

Next morning is hot and smells like damp soil. You ask him to stay home from work. “Let’s make umbrella drinks and run through sprinklers.” He shakes his head and walks out the door. Coffee cup, spoon, flowered bowl. 

You spend the day making lists—reasons to stay, reasons to go. You try to keep them even, but staying is losing and that’s when you know. The man’s been leaving for months and you—too slow to see. You’ve got the dog, an orange cat in a sunny windowsill, and three miscarriages. 

On Saturday you follow him, option number two. You don’t know why you’re so surprised to see him with her, the woman, because of course there’s a woman, there’s always a woman no matter what they say. She’s pretty and looks like a woman who has babies. You imagine calling her phone and listening to her ask who’s there, who’s there. How many times before she’d hang up?

You think about option three, leaving. You remember new shoes in September, fresh notebooks, sharp pencils. You think about looking for a small apartment with French doors and a patio for plants. 

He calls at dinnertime to say he’s working late, “really late, babe.” Whisk. Timer. Twine. You turn off the oven, dump the roasted chicken and potatoes, put away plates and silverware and fold the tablecloth. You pull down the window shades and sit in the dark. You listen to your neighbor lugging his garbage cans to the curb. 

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The Mother Tree | Georgene Smith Goodin

On heat-burdened afternoons, Mama spread a woven blanket under the cottonwood suckling the breast of Lanker’s Hill, the spongy wood of its boughs drooping towards the creek. I napped there, the gurgling water and rustling curtain of leaves more somniferous than any lullaby. After Joseph was born, he napped there, too, until Mama’s strength waned too much to climb that gentle slope.

Daddy planted four suckers from that cottonwood in our yard to capture the roof run-off – how those thirsty trees could drink – but they were really for Mama, an arboreal family echoing ours. They grew ten feet a year, and I balanced across my favorite’s fragile limbs, spreading my weight so as not to split them.

During the years-long drought, Mama saved those trees even though watering was forbidden. At dusk, she dragged out the bright green hose, set it to slowly drip all night. She insisted on doing it herself and I followed her, carrying her IV bag because its pole couldn’t glide across the mat of dead grass our backyard had become. That watering was the closest she got to prayer.

Thunder announced the drought’s end while I stirred the thin soup that was all Mama could stomach. My father raced outside when we heard the crack, mud sucking at his bare feet. I went to tell Mama our trees hadn’t taken the hit but her dry, papery skin was cool, her warmth having slipped away while I stood sentry at the stove.

I went to Lanker’s Hill at dawn, walked along the now thrumming creek. The cottonwood’s crown was in disarray, branches downed and scattered by wind. The bark on the trunk curled back in a diamond-shaped gash but the soft, virgin wood beneath was undamaged. I laid my hand there and swore I felt a pulse. 

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