Margaret Watson is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2022 Flash Fiction Contest I try my best to ignore the telephone vibrating in my back pocket. I focus on what I am doing–massaging Stephen’s feet. Using lotion, my fingers like feathers, caressing the skin that is now so delicate. The vibration stops and starts again. Whoever this is, they aren’t going to use voice mail. “I’ll just get this,” I say to Stephen. I can’t be sure if he’s heard me. I step back, tap the answer icon, already knowing who it is. Barbara, … Continue reading Thank You For Calling by Margaret Watson →
Beyond the obvious grief of losing a parent or relative to old age, there is a particular tragedy that accompanies a person’s passing rarely whispered inside the comfortable blandness of funeral homes or over the open caskets of the recumbent dead: the tragedy of discovering lives left unfinished and dreams unfulfilled while cleaning out the lingering personal effects of the departed. In my lifetime so far, I have sorted and removed the orphaned belongings from the homes of three people that have escaped their corporal lives: a woman in Boca Raton, Fl, whom I only … Continue reading Post Mortem Clean-Up →
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