Charlotte Hamrick
The timer on the microwave is beeping and I let it, counting and pacing with its rhythm. My fingernails are splitting, one by one and I peel, peel, peel them to the quick, leaving flakes in a trail behind me. I wander from room to room as if I’m a ghost haunting the wrong house, bumping into sharp corners or intrusive door frames. I’m on autopilot, snatching Hershey Kisses one at a time as I pass the candy dish, gnashing them between my teeth or absently pushing them into my jeans pocket where they melt into manifestations of my exhausted agitation.
I go days without bathing or brushing my hair and I blame the moon. It’s too bright, it’s too big, it’s too far away, it turns its face away when I yell at it.
My love is dying, and I blame the stars. They sparkle like prickly teeth waiting for prey, bite holes in the blanket of the night sky letting in radioactive rays that nuke him in the daytime. He moans in a series of three. His vulnerable, soft abdomen rises and falls slowly, pulling in a last, long breath as in a drowning before surrender.
I’m so tired of death and the dying. My scorecard is filled with so many black marks it’s nonexistent. I feel my heart thumping in my chest, and I’m amazed it’s still there. I’m amazed my brain still fires fractured thoughts that bump around in my head like moths that bump into the light that burns them. Like moths, I fear I will bump bump bump until I’m also bits of bloodless matter coalesced on cold concrete.
Charlotte Hamrick began writing at age 53 after retiring from the healthcare field. She has been published in a number of literary journals and her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2023. She is Managing Editor for Reckon Review.
Her Linktr.ee.
losing our grip on purpose 