I’m at the park with Rory, watching him play in the fountains. He stands beneath a jet of splintering whiteness, rainbows splashing at his feet. It’s a blistering hot day but weirdly we’re the only ones here. Then, the little blond girl appears. This time she’s wearing a sky-blue swimsuit and white Alice band. She joins Rory, and before long, they are chasing each other around in a glitter of light.

I’ve seen her before. In the changing rooms at the swimming pool. Waving from the top deck of the 53 bus. At Morelli’s ice-cream parlour, tucking into a peach melba. She’s always alone. I scan the benches for her mother but see no one. Maybe I could keep her. At last, Rory would have a sister.

I unfurl the towel. “Rory! Time to go,” I call. He skips over and the little girl follows. They stand side-by-side, dripping water. She has forget-me-not blue eyes, exactly like Rory’s, exactly like yours.

“I’m Alice,” the girl announces. Her voice is twinkling sunshine.

Alice. The name we would have given our daughter, had you lived. Alice in Wonderland. Aurora Bora Alice. Magic Alice with Mother’s Day flowers. Drink Me shrinking Alice.

A dark cloud rolls over the sun. I touch the place of my long silver scar; try to numb the black—the shriek of metal skidding on tarmac, mangled flesh; waking in the hospital trussed in bandages with starched white sheets.

I reach out the towel, cocoon boy and girl in its softness. The heat breaks and suddenly fat, warm raindrops splash my cheek. I’m suffused with a sense of happiness, the intuition that you’re here with us.

“Don’t cry, Mummy,” Alice says.

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.

Jane has micro and flash fiction stories published with MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and in 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 nominated for Best Microfiction 2023 and Best of the Net 2024. Her story Miracle Grow won the Pokrass Prize at the Bath Flash Fiction Festival held in 2022.

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); nominated by MacQ for the Best Microfiction 2023 anthology.

⚡ Passengers, ekphrastic microfiction by Jane Salmons, in Starry, Starry Night: An ekphrastic anthology inspired by Van Gogh’s masterpiece, published by The Ekphrastic Review (25 February 2022)