Her flannel pajamas have orcas on them—black and white against pale blue. It’s cold in the kitchen and still dusk outside. The coffee tastes burnt because skim milk was all there was in the fridge. It’s more than dark this time of year. The blur of holidays starts with Halloween when Valentine’s Day is that far flicker at the other end like looking backwards through binoculars. She has always had an arrhythmia but these days she is more conscious of the palpitations. It’s much worse after three or four glasses of wine. The feeling goes away eventually. Meanwhile there’s the black ice of negotiation where to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas—with his family or hers. Every decision will disappoint someone. A snowstorm seems a viable excuse to stay home. Obviously the best choice. She read somewhere that the only way to fix her heart, is to freeze it.
winter
the art
of a scar
short prose has appeared in 100 Word Story, KYSO Flash, Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, Quarter After Eight, SmokeLong Quarterly, Unbroken, and Wigleaf. Her work is anthologized in Nothing Short of 100 (Outpost 19, 2018), Accidents of Light: KYSO Flash Anthology 2018 (KYSO Flash Press), and NOON: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press, 2019). Her most recent collections include a prose poem e-chapbook, Qualia (White Knuckle Press, 2017), and a collection of short poetry, for Want (Ornithopter Press, 2017). She is also the author of two award-winning haiku collections: apology moon (Red Moon Press, 2013) and The Horse with One Blue Eye (Snapshot Press, 2006). A haibun of hers was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. She is an associate editor for The Heron’s Nest.
