After twenty years, they gave up on having a child. Mr. Gray passed his time baking—vanilla sponge, cinnamon twists, sweet little gingerbread girls; Mrs. Gray grew flowers on their allotment—neat rows of marigolds, snapdragons, and dahlias. Then, one night, when a Blood Moon smelted the sky crimson, a daughter arrived. The couple were astonished but counted their blessings. As Ruby grew, they marvelled at her flaming hair, flashing currant-black eyes, her fearlessness.

After the drugs, the motorbike accident, the custodial sentence, the allotment became a knotted tangle of weeds. Mr. Gray still baked gingerbread, which he sealed, along with his cutter, in a plastic box.

“Let me out! Let me out!” cried a girl with a tiny lemon-peel mouth.

Jane Salmons

is from Stourbridge in the UK. Her first poetry pamphlet, Enter GHOST, was published by dancing girl press in 2022. Her debut poetry collection, The Quiet Spy, was published by Pindrop Press, also in 2022.

Relatively new to writing flash and micro-fiction, Jane has stories published with MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and the Ad Hoc Fiction anthologies Dandelion Years and Flash Fiction Festival Five; and forthcoming in The Dribble Drabble Review. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and was nominated for Best Microfiction 2023. Her story Miracle Grow won the Pokrass Prize at the Bath Flash Fiction Festival held in Bristol.

Author’s website: https://www.janesalmonspoetry.co.uk

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Weightlessness of Love, ekphrastic microfiction by Jane Salmons in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 12, March 2022)