Worthing Flash

Back and forth, I walk the bridge every Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m. where he once set his easel with back to the sun (to catch the walking shadows). “ That’s where our life begins and ends,” he said and squeezed my hand with such intent I knew he wanted me at his side, always, gliding past the Seine—our images mirrored in water, the sun leaving shapes underfoot. We walked and walked until his hold loosened, and quietly we stepped to separate sides. His voice drowned in the whisper of those passing—my fingers fretting, dampness circling my eyes.  by Chella Courington      

With a white apron cinching her waist a young woman in black leans against the courtyard door, watching the older couple at the table against the wall—his lips moving, teeth occasionally visible, her face in her hands. She never responds, never moves until the man stands, and with only the slightest of pause, a single tick, he walks out. She raises her head in his receding footsteps and looks at the young woman in black. Neither flinch, holding the other’s gaze, sharing an understanding (to be given their due) of how love seeps away.     Chella Courington (she/her) is a writer/teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals including DMQ Review, The Los Angeles Review, and New World Writing. A Pushcart and Best New Poets Nominee, Courington was raised in the Appalachian south and now lives in Central California. She has two recent microchaps of poetry— Good Trouble , Origami Poems Project, and Hell Hath , Maverick Duck Pr...

It all started with the ring. Not the ring Radney gave Roshelle over lasagna in candlelight ten years ago in September. Nor the gold band he gave her a year later. But the wrestling ring he built in back of their split-level ranch home with blue shutters and salmon brick in Montgomery, Alabama. Radney wanted to be a professional wrestler since he first saw Hulk Hogan with a blond mane and protruding pecs glistening on TV. Roshelle wanted Radney to be one too. When she was a kid, her dad used to take her to the armory every other Saturday to sit on the front row and watch grown men in speedos pin each other to a bouncy floor. Their sweat soaked her red dress, cotton sticking to her legs. “How’s that for a good show,” her dad always said as they walked into the night, the air chilling her wet skin. When Radney announced he was going to build the ring, Roshelle was elated, absolutely over the moon, hugging and kissing him as if it were their wedding night. They hauled posts and ply...

My mother would start unpacking the Christmas decorations on what we now call Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving when shoppers stampede stores.) The aroma of leftover turkey still permeated our house as she filled the air with a regular rotation of Andy Williams, Perry Como and Burl Ives: “A Holly Jolly Christmas” was especially irritating. Santa’s elves and reindeer would appear on the mantel and coffee table. Even a ceramic reindeer head above the toilet in the guest bathroom. At each window sill she arranged angel hair around an electric candle switched on every afternoon at 4 and off at 8 the next morning. A tiny porcelain Jesus lay in a tiny wooden manger next to the front door. Mary, Joseph, the Wise men, and the donkey stood to the side. Straw scattered far and wide. Hanging from the top of doorways was mistletoe tied together with red ribbon. No one could enter or exit without a sloppy kiss from the nearest reveler. There seemed no escape from Mother’s holiday hou...

Tom was sitting near the artificial Christmas tree untangling lights. As Adele squeezed by, her elbow hit a glass ornament that fell and exploded, red glass spread in an imperfect circle. This was their first Christmas in the new house they bought in Santa Barbara, their first Christmas without parents. Her father dying shortly after his mother last spring, and now they had no one to visit, no one to invite. “Oooh,” she said. He heard her and thought, she must be bleeding. Cut. But all he saw was her looking at the shattered ornament. “Are you ok?” he asked. “That was my dad’s.” He tried not to sigh or say anything or make a gesture because he knew a storm might come and somehow he would be implicated by thought or deed or lack thereof. He stood and carried the lights to the kitchen table. When he came back, she was sitting beside the broken ornament, staring at it. “Do you even miss your mother?” she asked. He sat down across from her counting out Mississippis. “Of...

  I knew something was amiss when my six-year-old daughter Sara fixed herself a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and dropped a chocolate Pop-Tart in the toaster. “You’re hungrier than usual,” I said. “Sabrina’s tired of cereal,” Sara said. “ Who? ” “My new friend.” “What new friend?” I asked, looking at the door. Sara put her bowl on the table with a napkin and spoon. Then she put the Pop-Tart on a plate, placing it next to her with a napkin, knife, and fork. While I packed her lunch of a PBJ and apple, I heard her giggle. “What’s so funny?” I asked. “Sabrina. She’s making squares of her tart.” There were ten tiny squares (really rectangles), two across and five down. After closing my daughter’s Hello Kitty lunch box, I turned around and the partitioned Pop-Tart was gone. “Don’t forget to make her a sandwich too,” Sara said and left for the bathroom, whispering behind her hand. I was a single mom. Shortly after Sara’s dad died in a car accident, Sabrina sh...