Competition Fifteen Shortlisted: Float, Sail, Move On by Julia Ruth Smith

You order the origami squares from Amazon in shades of blue, the colour of his eyes, his favourite colour, and gather trinkets while your mother is sob-ridden in her aching bed.  Your own eyes are cherries weeping from sudden blossom in a warm spring. No one warned you about the ticking of a clock in a midnight kitchen. How it could almost drive you mad. There are foxes walking outside your house. You hear them in the crunch of gravel that sounds like a father’s footsteps. Pause. Begin.

On the floor there are flowers and slides, fine pencils and spices. You are not nimble with your fingers and it takes time to sharpen, to bring into focus a man; to love him, love him not, to conjure his smell. He frowns from a family portrait as if to say what are you doing, you’re wasting your time. Move on.

What cannot be physically enclosed you turn into words, when the words escape you – resting on chair-backs, hovering by the back door for a kiss – you fold in memories as light and transparent as clouds. Float.

Soon your fingers dance with laughter, you lose track of time again and again. Sometimes you discard a moment, setting the crumpled square aside, unsure if he really said that word, if he could ever be that cruel. Remove.

When you’ve folded and nipped and straightened and coddled, you sit back on your pins-and-needle knees to observe the pile of tiny, tumbling boxes. A lifetime. An ocean. You choose one for yourself. It’s a tiny sailboat. You smell the breeze, your brother’s freckles, tupperware sandwiches, tan-lines and the bristly length of a beard saying ‘don’t be scared.’ You climb aboard and sail, just as he’d have wanted. Done.

Julia Ruth Smith is a mother, teacher and writer. She lives by the sea in Italy. Her work has appeared in Vestal Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Flash Frog, Full House Lit and in the latest Bath Flash Fiction Anthology. Find her on Twitter @JuliaRuthSmith1.

Photo courtesy of Julia Ruth Smith

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