These lines are just wonderful…

“The priest claimed her breasts with his awkward insistence on purity. As she packed them in salt and brown paper, Salida wondered how the Virgin had ever suckled an infant.”

many congratulations Sharon

Vanessa

Here is an entry for your intriguing contest.

After Ashes

When the rhododendrons bloomed in April, Jill marked the year. A year of grief-daze, held to each day, barely, by her infant daughter’s demands. The annual space rent was due and Jill faced the task of sorting what to keep, what to give away, what to sell. Toby had been a collector, and planned to unpack everything when their new house was finished. Jill knew she should keep some mementos, if only to tell Amelia, “This was once your father’s. Your grandfather’s.”

The baby was climbing now. Her miniature fingers touched, opened, lifted everything. Jill imagined Amelia absorbing clues to her identity, traces of a daddy she’d never truly know. The musty scent of the storage locker mingled with Amelia’s baby-clean pureness, creating a disconnect so ragged that Jill began to weep. Then she caught her grief, distracted by her daughter’s giggles.

Amelia rattled a small black box, shiny as patent-leather party shoes. Jill knew it had once held their wedding rings. Four years earlier, Toby had confessed that he’d lost his ring, surfing. Jill had never believed him, due to other infidelities. An urge to burn everything flooded Jill like a narcotic.

Instead, she pulled the box gently from Amelia. Inside, a pearly fragment of abalone shell, smoothed by tides, iridescent blue like Amelia’s eyes. Jill felt huge relief—not to catch Toby in a lie he could no longer defend. Beneath the shell hid a flat, silvery skeleton key, the sort to fit a safe deposit box.

I came across the silver-plated Sheffield teapot, huge dent in the body and no pineapple on top. Cost us five bucks at the Giant Antiques Fair, remember? I found it buried in the box with the extension cords and Christmas lights, my heart broken because I knew I’d gotten to it just in time – you’d have found the teapot and thrown it out with the rest of the junk from the garage.

Maybe you left it there for me to find. Maybe some of its old glimmer had shown through the tarnish when you picked it up and headed for the trash, the way the wheels of the stroller kept getting caught up in the long grass of the soccer field where all the antiques vendors had set up their tables, both of us feeling clumsy and unfit as young parents, worried sick, the sun was beating down on our baby’s head.

“How much for the teapot?”

“Just gimme five bucks,” the man had said, anxiously, as if he’d felt partly responsible, his table out in the full sun.

So maybe you expected me to tell you I’d found the medium extension cord I was looking for, and this, holding up the teapot for you to see, asking if you minded me keeping it in my own storage. I could hold it from time to time.

But I’ll never know for sure. It’s easiest for me to believe I stole it from you.

The thumbs were the first to go. Her mother’s largest thimble served as casket for both and at the age of five Salida put away her babyhood. Later, she would also sacrifice her lush eyebrows and that beautiful nose of flesh and gristle to the whispers of her classmates. They went in the dustbin after school. When her father burned the trash on Sunday, Salida watched her brows rise on the smoke, tumbling together like castanets thrown into the sky.

The priest claimed her breasts with his awkward insistence on purity. As she packed them in salt and brown paper, Salida wondered how the Virgin had ever suckled an infant. The mole under her lower lip, her long black hair that reflected light like a spider’s eyes. Even the secret dimple on her back where Pedro used to place his thumb. One by one, Salida surrendered pieces of herself. She swept them onto the porch, watching them fly into the night like dust returning to the stars. She filled glass jars and small spaces under the floor boards. She wrapped them in scarves behind the socks.

Salida’s granddaughter found the first fragment. It was a strip of slender wrist wrapped in silver wire. Salida flashed it like a dancer flaunting her grace. She had thought such things were lost. She had forgotten herself. Soon more pieces were uncovered: an earlobe, pierced and hung with a dangling loop. Hands and calves. A smiling mouth. Thumbs. Salida had found herself.

Next To My Finer Silk Things

By Stefanie Freele

Since I can count on your concealment, I’ll tell you what is stored in the top drawer behind the boxes of bracelets. I might even show you. The item is the size of my palm, black, and deadly cute. I don’t wear it, I rarely touch it, you don’t know about it. The matte surface is wiped clean.
The unregistered weapon is wrapped in a flannel snow-flake bag that originally held matching Victoria Secret pajamas. Perhaps the safety is on. I remove the Berretta when I sleep alone, which is rare.
I believe I used the gun for target practice. My sister drew Mariah Carey, complete with breasts. Since then, I’ve heard Ms. Carey speak. She doesn’t seem deserving of holes in the chest. Don’t tell her I shot her.
Once, while hiking, I noticed mountain lion tracks, two sets of firm fresh paw prints pressed in mine.
As we came around a turn, my puppy shivered, yelped and cowered behind my legs. I warned, “Hey lions! I’ve got a gun.” I aimed for the sky and pressed. Thunderous. Animals dashed in the bushes. Rhythmic twig breaking through the woods.
In principle I don’t own the weapon. I might be joshing you.
I could tell you that every once in awhile, I wished I had reason to hold its heaviness with both hands, or maybe one hand, aim at something threatening and fire. If you’re searching, the gun rests cold, weighty, and poised in cheerful flannel. It might be loaded.

THE END

Here’s my entry for the comp.

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Matchbox Minutes

Under her pillow, wrapped in a man’s handkerchief, Ella has an old matchbox containing time. No-one knows it’s there. Not the nurses. Not the son who whispers a kiss into her ear then tiptoes away.

***

Ella collected time, years back. Kept it in her mother’s face cream pots, her dad’s cigarette packets, matchboxes. Always time no-one wanted.

Like the day they told her to go upstairs to see Grandpa.

Grandpa’s bed had a striped ticking mattress. Stained.

“Who’s there?” he said.

“Me. Ella.”

“It’s not nice in here, I’d go back down.”

“It’s smelly.”

“I know.”

“Where are you going? They said you were going.”

No answer.

“Grandpa? Shall I open the curtains?

No answer.

“Grandpa? When are you going?”

“Oh. Five minutes, I expect.”

“Grandpa?”

No answer.

“Grandpa, can I have those five minutes?” and Ella’d slid open her matchbox and stuffed the minutes inside like the thin silk of a magician’s handkerchief.

***

Now, all the time she’d saved had been used up, spent. Minutes given to the boyman who would be her husband, when he couldn’t quite say “Will you marry me?” Minutes given to her son when he was blue-born.

Minutes sprinked through their lives like a salve, easing, oiling.

All except this matchbox. Grandpa’s five minutes.

Ella kept the box, just in case. But somehow she knew that when the time came those minutes wouldn’t matter at all, and she’d just let the box fall to the floor.

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