Honorable Mention 2026 Gooseberry Pie Writing Competition
by D.E. Hardy
but whenever you tell the story of that day, you focus on the bees. How you woke up that morning super down about losing your job, wondering if you should pack it up and go back to the States. How you thought about lying in bed all day rewatching The Gilmore Girls, again, but decided to treat yourself to a nature walk, the good one that’s three buses away, so you could breathe trees into your lungs. How you chose the narrowest path, wanting to feel the squeeze of the forest, the scratch of branches on your limbs, how now you can see you probably kicked a hive when you tripped over that fallen log, but at the time, the bees seemed to come from nowhere—one sting, then another, another. How you started running, but the bees were everywhere, your hair, your clothes, your nostrils, you running and running, the path too tight to flee anywhere else, running and batting bees every which way, screaming I’m leaving, I’m leaving, which made no sense, but you yelled it over and over while you ran, legs burning, until finally, you broke free of the woods and fell upon the earth in an open meadow, the swarm slowly dissipating, you out of breath, welts swelling, chaos still buzzing inside, an animal fear that you weren’t going to make it, but now, you know you were alright, because your place was getting burgled right then—your bike, your laptop, your tv, they picked you clean—and you can only guess what might have happened if you’d been home instead of rolling on the ground as your eyes ballooned shut, there, in that sky-bright field. Safe.
D.E. Hardy’s work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, X-R-A-Y, Lost Balloon, among others. Her work has been anthologized in Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. D.E. lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Find her online at dehardywriter.com.
Photo by Damien TUPINIER on Unsplash
