After their fifth unsuccessful round of IVF, she took an axe to the willow and started swinging. Eyes blazing, she whipped the gleaming blade across the trunk, until there was nothing left but an ugly stump.

“It’ll never grow back,” he said, frowning.

But by springtime, pale green shoots budded from the slender, knotted branches and by summer the tree was a swirling mass of viridian against a swathe of baby blue sky.

They decided to move house; give it one more try.

The garden of their new home was a green plastic rectangle. There were no trees to prune; few flowers to water. She joined a gym; he built a shed. His “snug shack” she jokingly called it.

When the snow fell in winter, he wrapped up warm in his herringbone overcoat and sat in his shed, listening to the football scores. He had a kettle and two-bar heater installed. She started staying out late with her new friends.

“Why don’t you set up the camp bed?” she said. “That way I won’t disturb you when I get in.” “Suits me,” he said. He liked to wake early. Tune in to the 5 a.m. Shipping Forecast on Radio 4. Finisterre. Dogger. Malin Head.

One morning he woke to a late April frost. He opened the shed door and saw dozens of babygrows, snipped and strewn like confetti across the glittering, white lawn.

He didn’t bother reading the note she’d left on the kitchen table. He could guess what it said. He went back to his shed and switched on the kettle. On the window ledge was a small brown pot. Through the compost, a single silver cutting twisted upwards towards the warm, spring sunshine. He began humming.

Publisher’s Note:

“A babygrow, babygro, sleepsuit, or sleep suit in British English is a one-piece item of baby clothing with long sleeves and legs used for sleep and everyday wear...” (Wikipedia).

Link retrieved on 16 July 2023: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babygrow

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)