Flash Fiction

[My Good Babushka]

The ultrashort short story- prose poem. Do you write any? Is it a worthwhile exercise?


I sit in a canoe, floating among the rafters in a dusty garage. With me, under the eaves, is a brown-haired boy. In his right eye, his pupil is shaped like a teardrop. It was from an accident he'd had with a pen knife. Can he see all right? I ask him. He says he can see all right, but sometimes he sees something that crouches down. We pretend we are sailing into a land of blight and dust. It is frightful, until I hear a radio come on below us. His sister is washing her car, and making oily rainbows on the driveway.