She eats her rice grains with a fork fashioned from a hummingbird’s wishbone. Then she drinks an acorn cap of high fructose corn syrup. It’s a trade-off; she disapproves of its effects on the nation, but needs the calories for her pursuits. Perhaps her doctor will recommend an alternative, if she can find him in the murk of his helminthic studies. She hopes the pink peppercorns she grates for tea are actually the color they appear to be. What if they were blue, originally? Little worlds. What if she were grating whole continents? Must not think about that, she muses, not wanting to lose the pleasure of her favorite tea. All of Being disassembly and re-uptake anyway, she thinks. Everything trading places until everything has been everything. But what does she know? Perhaps her pastor can shed some light on matters of scale, if she can just get beyond her dislike for the word Pastor. She sips and nibbles. Eating sends matter to water. Drinking sends water to be a solvent. Why, she wonders, has the universe come through her? It drinks itself to know difference. And black holes are washing machines, cleaning and spinning thoughts. All for what occasion? The size of such notions makes her dizzy. Maybe the thoughts of a thinking universe require eons to form, and even then, if she can apprehend them, each might only be part of something like a word or phrase from the label on her biscuit tin. “Flavonoids.” Or, “Kumquat zest.” She shakes her head. Inhales the last steam from her cup. Better luck to be had, she decides, in teaching book mites to read philosophy. And with that she sets her things aside and returns to her work of sorting poppy seeds by size and hue, on a white table.

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Spring, microfiction by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Writer Boy, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 4, July 2020); nominated by MacQ for Best Microfiction 2021

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction by Scroggins in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, microfiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)

⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol