The woman finally became uninterested in him. The triple-threat years of PTSD, menopause, and fear of aging finally imploded, leaving her in a center of calm. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Even after the fading freneticism of those years, the whirling disco-ball-of-hell years, the woman occasionally still stalked the ectoplasm of his online life. Yes, stalked—as shameful as it was.

Is.

Was.

Shame (noun): a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety.

Today she took a look at his social media after a very long time of not, and a realization crystallized in her mind.

I don’t care.

Care (noun): regard coming from desire or esteem.

The body-covering tats she used to find fascinating she now views as mainstream, predictable. The smart-ass attitude she thought of as clever now seems stunted, as if he’s stuck in a rebellious college echo chamber. The life-changing event that brought them together is now twenty years in the past, where it belongs. She’s no longer stuck there. What used to attract her now feels as unthinkable as she feels herself to have been.

Now (adverb): at the present time, not in the past or future.

The woman taps a few keys on her laptop, opening her email, waking up her rickety old seldom-used printer. The kachoong-kachoong sound coming from it sounds like a faltering heartbeat as a few pages drop to the floor. She allows her eyes to drift over the now meaningless words, through her mind, out of her head. She feeds the pages into the shredder.

:::

It’s a balmy Spring day. The air feels fresh, the day newborn. With a trowel in hand, the woman kneels in the rich, dark earth of her flower garden. The soil is alive with wriggling worms and other organisms experienced in decomposing and recycling, turning rubbish into nutrients.

Nutrient (noun): a substance or ingredient that promotes growth, provides energy, and maintains life.

The woman digs a nice, deep trench, perfect for the Lucifer Crocosmia bulbs she bought for this ritual. She spreads the shredded emails in the bottom of the trench, adds soil, fertilizer, and the bulbs. Covers it all with a satisfied pat knowing all the little organisms will begin working their magic.

Attributions:

“Care”: Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/care

“Now”: adapted from Cambridge Dictionary, Cambridge University Press:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/now

“Nutrient”: Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nutrient

“Shame”: Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shame

Links were retrieved on 29 June 2025.

Charlotte Hamrick’s

creative writing and photographs have been published in a number of literary journals and anthologies including Atticus Review, Best Small Fictions (2022 and 2023), The Citron Review, Connotation Press, Eunoia Review, Literary Orphans, Muddy River Poetry Review, New World Writing Quarterly, Reckon Review, The Rumpus, Still: The Journal, and Trampset,among many others.

Her fiction, CNF, and poems have been nominated multiple times for awards, including Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. She was a Finalist for the 15th Glass Woman Prize for her creative nonfiction.

Formerly Creative Nonfiction Editor for The Citron Review and Barren Magazine, Charlotte is now Managing Editor of Reckon Review and writes The Nitty Gritty Interview. She also writes intermittently on her Substack, The Hidden Hour. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Two Stories by Charlotte Hamrick (“Traveling the Soul Train Line” and “Hurry”) in Bottle Rocket (17 January 2025)

⚡ A Small Town Triptych, CNF by Charlotte in Reckon Review (16 August 2021)

⚡ Homes of New Orleans, photo essay and Artist’s Statement on Beauty in Peacock Journal (6 December 2018)

⚡ Hidden Magnolia, photograph by Charlotte in Nightingale & Sparrow (Issue II: Renaissance; 2019)

⚡ Spring Rain, photograph in Nightingale & Sparrow (Issue II: Renaissance; 2019)