Tag: flash fiction

Fall in the Long White Cloud

Jaclyn9 Comments

It’s a wet kind of cold, the kind that still allows things to grow.  The cloudy sky and diffused light makes the green of the plants more striking and they glisten with the drops of rain.  Actually, the rain doesn’t quite drop.  The air is so thick with water that it falls in a mist, mot even heavy enough to be a drizzle.  It makes me feel like I am walking through a long, white cloud, as if I am so far above the earth that I am inside the sky.  Only the moss reminds me that I am at sea level.

The tree outside my window has been dying all summer, but now, in the cold of the autumn rain it has begun again to grow.  It also seems confused by these antipodean seasons.  It lost its leaves in the shining sun of the summer drought, and now that it’s fall, it’s sprouting new life.

The koru seem unsure about whether or not to open.  I am sure I’ve seen the ferny tendrils on my path tentatively stretch open, and now they’ve closed again, as if pulling back from the abrupt, damp, winter.  Their spiral fractals seem to contract and breathe, opening timidly and closing again.

It’s on days like this I long to be outside, to feel the growth and life.  The plants and ground feel full with the potential that the rain brings, bursting with possibility and expectant growth.  I want that potential, that possibility, that growth.

 

 

This is a little birthday present from New Zealand for my awesome, amazing, inspiring cousin, Janelle.  

 

Also, Kiwi Creative Commons love to Brenda Anderson for the photo.  Thanks so much!

Submission: Flash Frontier

Jaclyn3 Comments

In my attempt to immerse myself in the writing culture of this fresh, charming country I find myself in, I stumbled across a little gem of a literary magazine called Flash Frontier.

It’s an online zine which publishes a monthly, theme-based collection of flash fiction and its morsels of stories are quite fetching.

Not only that, but the editors made suggestions to better my submission, which I did really appreciate.  You might find me in the November issue!

Creative Commons love to BabaSteve on flickr for the photo.  So New Zealand!

Cicadas (Thailand. May 2010.)

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She could hear his abdomen, even from eight stories above. She knew he waited for her, dressed in new skin holding the bark of a mango tree. For thirteen years, she had dug and hid, dug and hid, a pale pearl of a nymph sheltered in flooding clay. Prematurely buried. She had fed on rootjuice and waited.

And now, the time for burying herself was gone. She no longer wore the tough soil skin of the past. The brightness of being was nearly unbearable. She was green and larger than herself.

She sat exposed, mesmerized by the equatorial sunlight and the scene in front of her. A kaleidescope of rounded, dark-haired girls with lightning eyes and cloud-colored skin. Mirrored and moving the same. The repetition of girls had no expression on their faces. Their mouths moved at the groups of people surrounding them, but their dream-time eyes looked through the scene.

She heard him again, dry-fly ribs rubbing together to blot out the sounds of metropolitan traffic and children. The vibrations called to her.

She looked down at the expectant mango tree and imagined the future she would create. Millions of shimmery nymphs sprinkling from the branches, raining onto the soil below, christening the ground with their sparkling selves.

There was nothing for her to do now, except let go.

 

 

 

Creative Commons love to http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogersmith/ for the photo! Thanks!

 

Eleuthera (the Bahamas. Winter 2012.)

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I was born as lightning struck the Atlantic, during an unseasonable January thunderstorm.  The whole thing had groupers and houndfish cocking their heads to the side in unfamiliar motions.  The ocean was sky blue and clear, but the sky was choppy with swells.     Raindrops fell from the sea into the clouds.   The Sargasso Sea paused its churning, leaving seaweed suspended without shores.    Eel larvae hatched all at once and bathed in the stillness as turtle hatchlings poked their heads above the waves to watch.  The sea sang siren songs to Ayacayia, who delivered me to my mermother.  The bottle-nosed friends of my father gathered round to congratulate and speed along the loggerhead who bore me to the shore.

I landed on the islands among sea biscuits and beach glass.  My sargassum hair held mermaids’ purses and unborn sharks.  My skin sparkled with the pink sand that held centuries of periwinkle dust.   Queen conchs and horse conchs alike exploded with the pink noise of the oceans they held, sending coral-colored stars into the sky.  As the dawn came, yellow hibiscus opened gently, turning orange and deepening into red before falling into the ocean, in a microcosmic mimicry of the sun.   Inland, you could hear potcakes howling at the strangeness of the winterstorm and roosters who could no longer tell the time of day. Hermit crabs came together to perform a junkanoo, which raised me from my sleep.  I had always been able to swim, but it was time to begin to leave footprints in the sand.