When I ask my father how life is these days with my mother, a cavillous woman of cubist proportions and angled verbs, he turns away, points outside to the tractor rusting among the beans and radishes, tells me farm equipment has a half-life and not to expect too much. I ask again, and he reminisces about the mail-order bride his brother divorced, a Bulgarian engineer who lost her hand in a skirmish and wore a prosthesis with a black leather glove. She had an air of mystery, my father says, wistful as I’ve ever seen him. And knew her way around a cabbage. He crosses himself, although she’s not dead. And he’s not Catholic.
I hear pfffffft pfffffft, peek into the kitchen. Mother’s extruding rows of green foam dots onto tiny crescent-shaped plates. An aficionada of reconstruction in any form (never leave well enough alone! her motto), she’s taken up molecular gastronomy. The froth looks like tubercular spit.
I return to Father, rework my question, ask if he’s happy. A little, he tells me. A sparkly feeling in my heart tells me so. Glitter pools onto the floor, and he leans toward the sun in the middle of a luminous lake.
writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. Her work has been long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. She has a story published in Best Microfiction 2024 and one forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2024.
Her writing also appears in 100 word story, Atlas and Alice, Bending Genres, The Citron Review, The Disappointed Housewife, The Dribble Drabble Review, Flash Boulevard, Gone Lawn, New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Midway Journal, Milk Candy Review, Mslexia, The Offing, Tiny Molecules, trampset, and elsewhere.
