RECOGNITION
Word Count: 327
It doesn’t look like you and yet it does. I can’t be sure. It’s been a few years.
The way you’re strutting to the table, your hand just lightly at her back, steering her direction, cutting through the sea of white-capped tables, crystal sparks like sun-caught waves.
I remember how we took the yacht out to the Island. How afraid I was to tell you that I wasn’t sure I could swim the distance from where we anchored but I finally did. I wonder if you still keep a boat.
No, that’s not you. You’d be much taller sitting down. Then she’s quite tall so maybe that’s what’s odd about the two of you together. She looks a lot like me. Except she is so very tall.
A bit of gray like hoarfrost on your hair. You keep it shorter now. I wish you’d laugh; I know I’d know for sure if it was you to hear you laugh.
You look my way and hesitate for an instant–do you think it’s me you see? Am I a pleasant ghost laying golden-skinned against the paisley silk sheets of your waterbed? Are you remembering…
No, it’s not you. You would have winked and gotten up and come right over. I’m sitting here alone so there’s no danger of your ego touching ground. But still, the way you pour the wine, hand her the glass and clink it with a smile, it looks so much like you I really wonder.
I wish she’d let me kiss you, then I’d know for sure. We could excuse ourselves for just a moment and though she looks jealously possessive leaning into your shoulder as she is, she’d have to understand. And if it is you, well, we’d catch up politely on each other’s lives. She’d be no more to you than just a name.
And if it’s not, well nothing lost that wasn’t lost a long, long time ago.
As I’m reading this piece, I can’t help but think that we each have many 2-3 minute memory-snippets every day. What a wealth of material for short fiction/non-fiction narrative. Great job once again!
I think that’s why I love both writing and reading flash fiction. It’s taken from moments that are more likely to be relative to the reader. In a longer story, you’re always reading about somebody else and often can’t even relate to the events or character or conflict. With flash, details are minimal so that even if the event is foreign to us, the feeling is there.
oh susan this is lovely! absolutely love “you’d be much taller sitting down” and “catching up politely on eachothers’ lives”
Thank you, Amrita–I found myself writing in a state of “wistfulness.”
“wistful” is a good word for you, susan, and marvelous, this: “The way you’re strutting to the table, your hand just lightly at her back, steering her direction, cutting through the sea of white-capped tables, crystal sparks like sun-caught waves.”