Flash by Miranda Keskes
ON THE EVE OF THEIR TWENTY-FOURTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
After answering the front door and declining another neighborly cup of coffee, she closes the door, places another casserole on the kitchen counter, walks past the row of emptied vases still sticky with the remnants of decay, sinks into the couch cushions, shuts off her phone, and vows never to leave the house again; if she steps out onto the porch, the sun will be blinding, and he won’t be there to help her find her sunglasses, or hold her hand as they stroll down to the millpond and toss breadcrumbs to the swans, or catch her when she trips on that same crack and then scold the sidewalk with a waggling finger to make her laugh, or wrap his coat around her shoulders because she always forgets how cold it gets when the sun eventually sets, and so instead, she wraps herself up in their blanket and continues to ignore the stack of mail where the insurance check waits to be cashed.
Miranda Keskes is a Midwest writer and educator whose fiction appears in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Blink Ink, Does It Have Pockets, 50-Word Stories, Every Day Fiction, The Drabble, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions. She writes the monthly Substack The Teachers’ Lounge and is working on her first novel of the same name.
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