Photo by Tatiana Tochilova on Unsplash
In the morning we always walk the neighborhood, greeting the ginkgos and red maples, the dogs, smelling the smoke from our neighbors’ wood stoves. We always throw a small red ball and watch the golden tug at his leash, watch Penelope release it as Chalky chases the ball.
In the morning we never hold hands. We never walk by that house. We never speak of what happened at that neighborhood barbeque when someone left the gate to the pool open and we were busy with beer and laughter.
The rest of the day we collect the minutes and hours, and some days they become raw fibers—cotton, wool—and some days we’re even able to spin them into yarn, but what we’re waiting for is a day when we weave them into a cloth, one that is durable, one that breathes under the harshest conditions.
Claudia Monpere won the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize from New Flash Fiction Review, the Genre Flash Fiction Prize from Uncharted Magazine, and the 2023 SmokeLong Workshop prize. Stories in Best Small Fictions 2024 and 2025 and Best Microfiction 2025.
