Sprinkles Of Love by Kerri McCourt

On his birthday, family and friends gather, surrounded by balloons, streamers, and a magician with face paint. However, Jack’s latest medical results make it impossible to feel festive. We cling to hope, our faces marked with sorrow.

I slice the cake and scoop the ice cream. Jack requests sprinkles, so I cover the top of his chocolate cone with a handful of rainbow bits.

Sunlight filters through the leaves outside the window; somehow, they still shimmer. Paper-thin, the leaves drift, fluttering, falling like birds with broken wings.

This autumn will be his last.

A hug, a joke, or a treat from the local corner store could lift Jack’s spirits when he was younger. It was always so easy to make everything better.

Now, any expression of my love feels too small compared to its depth and insignificant against the circumstances. I once made a difference.

But then, as if the magician’s wand had waved, Jack reaches for his cone, and joy lights up his eyes. He licks, and his mouth forms a chocolatey smile, sprinkling me with fleeting hope—the possibility that I still might.

Kerri McCourt’s flash fiction has appeared in Free Flash Fiction, 101 Words, and Blank Spaces Magazine. She writes from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Read “Serenity” by Kerri McCourt — The September 2024 Bronze Medal Winner at Blank Spaces

Read the CBC First Person column piece by Kerri McCourt

Letter Soup by Kerri McCourt was shortlisted in FFF Competition Twenty-Seven – read it here

Illustration by Nancy Pham-Nguyen

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