Photo by Ramez E. Nassif on Unsplash
My father’s voice is silent, but not his lungs, which crackle, bubble, wheeze when he breathes.
My brother is not silent, slinging funny insults that scurry to our faces, begging smiles. The books are not silent, Rumi, Hopkins, and Frost gathering constellations for my father as my sisters and I read to him, but the hospital bed is silent, whirs and creaks abandoned in another landscape where the bed could be adjusted to comfort.
My mother is silent, and my younger brother, curious ghosts, waiting. My brother wants to ping pong my father’s soul between him and Mom because it’s been so long since my father’s body has had fun. Mom says yes.
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.
