Competition Twenty-Seven Winning Flash Fiction: Gilded Edges by Lucy Smith

I caress your parchment-thin hand with my thumb, watching your eyelids grow heavy. 

When your diagnosis crashed into our lives, death felt suffocatingly close; chasing me in my dreams, gnawing in my stomach on the bus to the hospice, overshadowing every moment of the long winter. Livid with rage, I spent weeks with my fists clenched, unable to understand your strength, your poise, your tenderness. I hated this insipid room, inhabited only by others who have gone before you, and all the stories and sadness that lie within its walls.

Yet as winter has tiptoed towards spring, I have begun to unfurl, surprised by moments of comfort and beauty within our daily rhythms. The movements of the cleaner, gentle nods and respectful knocks, emptying your commode, picking up fallen tissues, rearranging slippers. The shoulder squeeze from medical staff, carrying the burden of all that they know, holding soft smiles and comforting gazes. Snatches of sunlight bouncing off the glass beaker next to your bed, half-filled with a smoothie you haven’t touched. Tulips, laden with pollen, drooping onto the windowsill. 

The glint of gold on the gilded edges of an ancient book on your bedside table; the ribbon inviting me in.

An heirloom from your grandfather, printed a century before, its stories (twenty or forty times older than that) are pristinely preserved in translucent pages. The gold leaf rustles as I open it, and the silk thread takes me to a poem in Ecclesiastes about seasons and plants and rhythms and beauty. It is called ‘A Time for Everything’, and I speak each word aloud as you sleep, your body wracked and ragged, yet dignified and composed. My heart aches with each stanza. Closing the book, I lean in, press my lips against your cheek and whisper, ‘Thank you’.

This is Lucy’s first competition entry.

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