Shortlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Annual Writing Competition
by Amy Barnes
as they’ve done for centuries and eons and will do for eternity, but they find the cupboards are empty as they’ve unexpectedly run out of dark blue fabric, the kind they like to use because it isn’t easily torn by planes or space shuttles or shooting stars or pointing God fingers or bows and arrows or bull horns.
One of the younger women confesses she spilled storm bleach on the last of the denim and the navy jewelry box velvet, but she isn’t scolded by the elders; they know she’s in love and easily distracted.
The other women collectively-cluck at her to “not worry, Cassiopeia” and instead start shopping for fabric substitutes, all as she offers up her favorite patchwork bell bottoms and her new engagement ring box’s interior.
The Sky women find that the small fabric stores have closed early and there’s nowhere left to pick up the right material because private equity companies have destroyed the big box fabric options, gobbling them up one-by-one like wax-covered moon cheese snacks, until there are only label scars and Earth women roaming parking lots and staring in dusty windows, wistfully longing for the full aisles that once were.
For those sad not-sewing Earth women, the Sky women more purposefully dig into the fabric bolts they’ve stashed in nearby black holes for just such a shortage – choosing blood red Egyptian river chintz, black felt triangles saved from past midnights and school projects, shiny moon chiffon that glimmers at every angle, aurora borealis sherbert striped ticking, gauzy bridal sky veil cast-offs, silver star threads – all the materials they need, kept stacked and stored in neat piles by the Grandmother constellations who are always prepared, even when they have closed their eyes and passed down the nightly sewing to the younger women.
They all gather in their sewing circle – the young and middle-sky-aged, the elderly, the toddlers and newborns rubbing their star eyes because it’s past their bedtime, but nothing stops the night sewing, with each woman compiling bits of thread with pieces of day and past nights, until the scraps quickly gather at their feet, and occasionally drift down to Earth as they again remake the sky with their lightning fingers.
Amy Barnes is a recent empty nester who writes and edits, occasionally. She lives in Tennessee with her husband, a college kid or two when they come back home, and her very stubborn Labrador retriever.
Photo by Christian Agbede on Unsplash
