She was absolutely normal. She grew up without a dad, but so did they. They crushed her pansies down with shoes she couldn’t name, right heels rubbed commuter raw. There was nothing to envy in those jacket-wrapped silk-satin shells. Her life was exactly what she wanted. The earth accepted her gifts, returning favors with blossoms and symmetry. Each morning, she stepped from her patio into her temporal office, pruning thoughts and whetting desire.
Her mother asked, “When are you going to grow up? You’re 34 years old and you still live in an apartment alone. How are you going to find a man when you’re covered in dirt and smell like a farmer?” A man. She had one once. Once was enough. Those women in stockings wilted in mailroom scowls and swimming pool anxiety. Moist skin hid molding despair and regret. There was no jealousy in her coveralls of invisibility.
Her patio blooms mocked pale waxed handbags, scarves, decapitated cherry bubbles. They left in bouncing curls and limped home at night with gray pencil men, ghosts with heads of numbers. Transactions traded figure for figure then burst for winter’s frost. Painting pastel paths, her living colors on flesh taunted theirs chafed dead under layers. She worked in soil unsoiled and watched the others swallowed by worms.
12 Responses to “Recycled”
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Ahhh, I wish I could find that contentment.
Amazing piece,
~2
Thank you for reading! I’ll bet you could find it in there somewhere.
Reads like a cross between stream of conciousness and poetry, in thrid person. This fusion gives the piece life. A lot of flash fiction does not require re-reading, this demands it for all the right reasons. Lovely.
Glad you joined the #fridayflash! Great feeling of contentment to this piece!
Laura
New story for #fridayflash http://www.jentropy.com/archives/331 Recycled. #fiction #flashfiction
Thanks, Dan. It really is a completely different piece than when I started it. I only spent a few hours on it, but the story was originally much bigger, and pretty boring.
Thanks for reading, Laura! Now that I know about the #fridayflash I can start preparing earlier in the week.
Thoughtful piece. Glad you took part in the #fridayflash. Hope to see you next week.
~jon
This is far and away the best piece of your creative writing I’ve seen. A gift I’m grateful to have received.
Chris, that means the world to me. I actually thought of you as I wrote it. I had a story and an image in my head and the words didn’t describe how I felt about the snapshot. So I stopped writing a description and just painted with words. I wondered what it would be like to be a poet, and wondered what kinds of things you write and throw away.
Jon, thanks for stopping by! I hope I get to play next week too, it was fun!
This is wonderful!