Competition Thirty-One Shortlisted: I Made A Cubist-inspired Portrait Of Our Marriage by S.A. Greene
For the background I used that wallpaper we stashed in the garage. Remember? Beige, with the egg-yolk coloured teddy-bears? Then I added glimpses of your on-off vintage leather bomber jacket. The little violin in the far corner is me, of course. Your ever-faithful motif. Hips swelling with expectation, chest puffed bravely, waiting for the orchestra to play us in…
And then I scattered snapshots from our unreproductive holidays: Fiji, Havana, Lourdes. I’m not in any of them but I’m almost certain I was there. And look at you! Smirking behind your Ray-Bans in every shot, white linen shirt dazzling against magenta bougainvillea. At least you say it’s you, but I don’t recognise any of your faces.
Then I must have looked away for a second because a screenshot from your phone dropped with a Bang! in the centre and words are exploding all over us. Torpedo-black letters against digital blue.
‘I can’t stop thinking about you either.’
No. I’m not reading too much into things.
‘thinking about you…’
Her icon, blurry at first, sharpens into the truth.
‘about you…’
Her mouth moves. It follows me around the room.
‘either.’
It vines around my ovaries.
The egg-yolk teddies cover their eyes with their paws, turn their melting faces to the wallpaper.
A paper stork flaps towards a gap high up in the frame. The ticket in her beak says ‘This Way Out?’ I reach for the ticket but when my fingertips brush tailfeathers I pull my hand away. I reach again. Pull. Reach. Pull… a violin splitting into rival question marks.
Can’t I just stay in here and pretend?
Or should I start another portrait? The centre-foreground showing me, alone but standing tall. The background clear, untainted, leaving light and space for good things that might one day come my way.
S A Greene’s short fiction has appeared before in Free Flash Fiction, as well as in trampset, Temple In A City, Gooseberry Pie Lit., Blink-Ink, Mslexia, Fictive Dream, New Flash Fiction Review, Ellipsis Zine, The Phare, Flash Flood, Reflex, Funny Pearls, and other fabulous places.
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