Our Father

by Theresa Sylvester | May 29, 2025 | contest winner, micro

There’s a photo of our father, donning a black suit, standing under a tree, with a mischievous smile and a diamond stud in his left ear.

He was at a wedding, at a funeral, at a party, at a business meeting, outside a church, behind a courthouse, in another city, in another country–everywhere, all at once.

There are eight duplicates of this picture in frames made of gold, silver, or ornate wood matching his brown skin. It hangs on a wall in a living room, sits on a desk in an office in Lusaka, or rests on a bedside table next to a rosary that glows in the dark.

His offspring, all eight of us, sit around the fire, trading stories late into the night. Our mothers are inside, scattered in undesignated spaces, leaving us to sip cheap wine while we search for our father. We find him in our oldest brother’s swaggered gait, in the bridge of our baby sister’s nose, in the long fingers of another, in a tooth gap, in broad shoulders, in our misty eyes.

We stoke the fire and unpack our memories, holding them up to the embers. One of us claims our father attended their graduation carrying such a massive bouquet it shielded his face. Another swears they spotted him from behind at a political rally, but lost sight of him in the crowd. Someone heard his laughter in a room brimming with voices, or caught a whiff of his woody scented perfume in a barbershop in Lilongwe, or stumbled upon a gold pen identical to the one he wore on his suit pocket at a till in a bank.

To liven things up, we mimic the sound of his yellow Datsun Skyline vrooming off because he always had somewhere else to be. Spit sprays from our lips and we burst into laughter.

We pull into a huddle, promise to stay in touch, that our children will be cousins, and their childhood won’t be as fractured.

We are all here, entwined in his intricate web.

The mud that clung to our shoes at his graveside in the morning is now dry.

None of us wants the night to end, yet we harmonise to a song he sang to us as children;

Tulo? Eh?

Ubwela? Enhe!

Tulo? Eh?

Unzune? Enhe!

Sleep? Yes?

Are you coming? Yes!

Sleep? Yes?

Will you be sweet? Yes!

Secret to Marriage

by Laura Sciortino | May 27, 2025 | contest winner, micro

They sit in silence on the farmhouse porch. It’s nothing, he hopes. 

Earlier as his wife lay sleeping, toes twitching, nightgown transparent from sweat, he’d turned away, denying her protracted slumber meant anything. He brushed teeth, brewed coffee, ignoring his knotted gut.

“You’re quiet,” he says, admonishing himself for waiting until hope has ballooned

inside his aching chest.

Her palms rest on the Adirondack chair, preparing. She’s beautiful, undiscouraged by 74 years. “I’ve decided to become a giraffe,” she states.

But we haven’t even hung the hammock yet.

Clinging is futile. He must muster courage.

I can do this. What’s one more go-round?

Yet something twists. He’s tired. Hungry.

He wants ham on rye. He winces at his predictability, but there it is. He likes Dijon. He likes to shit on the toilet. He likes being an old man.

How many more years do we have?

Her head cocks against the cedar backrest. She gazes up, previewing her new

dominion. It isn’t the first time she’s uprooted expectations. This is how they’ve worked

things … maintained freshness, stoked passion.

As newlyweds, she signed them up for a workshop: “Live the Animated Life!” As

they walked to the train that bitter morning, he’d smacked his gum. It was Saturday. He

liked sleeping in. Through the scarf held to her nose, she’d hissed, “I hate it when you

smack.” He’d snapped, “What do you want from me?” Inside a steamy, glass-ceilinged

conservatory surrounded by flora, their flamingo instructor taught them they were snakes, coiled and defensive. They’d slithered home and promptly shed.

Since that verdant day, they’d been tortoises, eagles, woolly-bear caterpillars, foxes. It helped avert his midlife crisis. She’d breezed through menopause.

But the last few years, they’d settled down. Knitting was pleasant, as was reading. It was nice to sit in cars and eat with forks. He liked tinkering with his terrarium.

Her neck elongates. Her gaze is farther away … eyes larger, sadder. Soon, her jaw will protrude.

One last kiss before?

Too late. She’s already removed her glasses, stands barefoot in the grass.

And if I don’t go along? I could straddle her neck?

He’s grateful they made love last night. When she’d arched her back, howling, he’d recalled the year they were coyotes. Never still. Nothing unturned, untried.

The sun is high. He squints. 

She’s really getting up there, casting a longer and longer shadow.

What now?

I Come From Aliens

by Janet Fancher | May 22, 2025 | contest winner, micro

There’s a picture from my wedding where my father looks at me with his face all screwed up with concern and his hand scratching his head.  Forty years later, on the couch at the dementia ward where he now lives, and I visit, he gives me the same look. This time, I’ve called the brown thing in front of him a table, and he isn’t certain I am right. Last week he told me about the world he used to live in, this week this is the only world he lives in.  Gone are the roads and the hills and my mother and cars and fishing.  Much simpler this way.

He pats his shirt pocket where he keeps his glasses. When he can’t find his, he steals other peoples’ glasses.  My brain, he says.  Why don’t you wear them? I ask, and I get that look again. My brain, he says more emphatically, so I will understand his need to only bring them out in the most dire circumstances.

Gone is his walking. Gone is his scratching out numbers in some obscure equation. Gone is his lanky body at the dining table trying to explain story problems to me. Gone are the gardens and house and the trip to China and the exact way he reloaded the spoons in the dishwasher after my apparently feeble efforts.

We look at family photo albums.  Occasionally he reaches out and touches the face of someone. Gone are the names, though he doesn’t seem to care. Look at the old people, he says about the pictures of his parents.  He touches an ancient picture of me, says That one was trouble.

Even baseball disappears. I give him his glove with the softened and scratched leather, and he turns it and turns it. Gone is the National Championship he was so proud to win. Gone are his buddies and their rallying cry of Let’s We Go. Gone are the days he called me scatter arm. Gone, all of it, to some other planet. The glove so used it folds in on itself. Finally, he slides his fingers into the glove and smacks the palm. He winds up and mimes throwing a ball at me. I catch it, and across the universe, I throw it back.