She was 52, long past the nights of prayers and fairytales that might help her daughter dream of something other than what led to the night terrors. Long past the blind faith in a revolving door of medicines and doctors who must surely have known more than she did. Long past the hope that at prison, her daughter might have gotten clean and seen and been safe enough to survive her sentence. But here she is, years later, still ready to believe in miracles, stapling flyers onto utility poles, as if her beloved bird, once uncaged, wouldn’t fly, fly away.

Heather Bourbeau’s

fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cardiff Review, Cleaver, Eleven Eleven, Short Édition, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has been featured in several anthologies, including Nothing Short Of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost 19) and Respect: Poems About Detroit Music (Michigan State University Press). She is finishing a collection of one hundred 100-word stories entitled Tart Juice.

Author’s website: https://www.heatherbourbeau.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ 100-Word Stories From Tart Juice

⚡ How to Talk to a Former Warlord, a poem by Heather Bourbeau in The Missing Slate (18 March 2015)