Flash Fiction – Surrounded by Not Your Own
And you sit there. Rain pattered against the glass asking you to focus but your eyes remain glazed. A thin film between your thoughts and actions.
And you sit there. Wondering how long the rain will splatter down on your world. You wonder how many shades of nothingness can be achieved by just sitting in a chair, by a window, next to a small garden, in a small city, surrounded by lots of not your own.
Taking a breath, a deep lung filling breath, you grab the sides of the chair and push. Away.
Far is where you want to push but your strength allows you to stand and you stand there next to the window, facing a small garden surrounded by a small city and lots of not your own.
A step is all it takes. You know this and you look at your feet resting on a solid wood floor. They are not sinking. You are not sinking. And that is good.
No matter how unfocused you are. No matter how much not your own surrounds you.
Remember, you are not sinking and that is good.
Flash Fiction – When One Feels Too Much
One feels way too much when walking alone on a Saturday night. Footballers weaved past singing songs and an old man stood staring blankly with spit running down the side of his face. Heading Passed the Gasteig, a group of girls with skirts too short for the weather clung to each other as they wobbled up the hill laughing at some group joke not overheard or understood.
A couple walked towards me and then the woman stopped in my path. The man giggled as he realized what his girlfriend had done. I weaved effortlessly around her, and the boyfriend and I both shrugged.
Men traveled in packs. Drunk packs?
Heading over the bridge, Three mothers walked by discussing a child who ran past me with a huge white cat on her head.
“Tigre?”
“Tigre.”
“Tigre?”
“Tigre.”
“Tigre.”
I stood at the light waiting. A husky man stood on the other side of the street waiting. We waited for the light to turn green without looking at each other – his furry Chihuahua daintily smelled the air.
I plodded past the begger. The one always sitting outside the church who does not belong to the pack of beggers from the shopping district. A group of drunk Asian tourists pushed each other forward and sideways in an effort to get somewhere other than where they were.
A street musician played and I listen to the rhythm of the city as I walked alone on a Saturday night.
Flash Fiction – Step by Step. Grief Moved Over.
Step 1 – Information. Two realities struck together and smashed the imaginary world in which we lived. It felt appropriate to be in a country surrounded by strangers – Not even you were real anymore – just a figment of my imagination. My new reality overwhelmed me and I started to build a wall you couldn’t blow down.
step 2 – Water. I swam for hours. I swam hoping the water streaming past my body would latch onto the tears in that way water does. Take them away water. Take them away and take the pain with them.
Step 3 – Upcycle. You loved him and then passed him over to me like a used sweater? Your used stained and mistreated sweater. I wanted to fly across the world and get a refund for something I paid way too much for. Your mistakes ate away big chunks which were too hard for me to mend.
Step 4 – Scanned. Photographs. Childhood. Marriage. Children. I scanned and shredded and discarded one box after another. I stopped eating. I stopped hating. I stopped loving what never existed.
Step 5 – Hollowness. I tossed and emptied and cleansed and rinsed and repeated the process over and over again. I couldn’t seem to get rid of it. That last little bit of sadness that clung to my cells. So many years and so much sadness stacked in tight. Just one wrong word. It took just one wrong word and I was back tossing, cleaning and rinsing my soul.
Step 6 -Passion. Passion flowed somewhere. It flowed into my work. It flowed into my words and my art. I lived a see-saw existence and I was no chinese acrobat. The plank was tilted in one direction and I was with my feet firmly on the ground. No matter how much I pushed, I needed someone on the other side.
Step 7 – Bed. Something was different. I opened my eyes and breathed in deeply. I was no longer in the middle of the bed. I made room for another. Grief finally moved over.
Emmy Horstkamp 