Flash creative non-fiction based on historical Great Plains diaries
Note: For this week’s flash narrative, I take inspiration from 1) micro-fiction writers extraordinaire Pam Parker and Robert Vaughan to write a piece of exactly 100 words, and 2) for the voice, the first work of literary fiction I ever read (as a high school freshman) that challenged me to think beyond my comfort zone: …
Last night after supper I bathed in the first rain water of the season from our barrel. It is now spring, so meadowlarks sing in the snow.
The night air was so still that at times we could hear the sounds of Thomas’s saxophone from over the hill. Mrs. Whitcher didn’t say it, but I knew she was worried about her husband, who had been gone now for three days. Mr. Whitcher’s car sat lifeless in the yard, broken beyond repair.
Will and I are alone tonight, and I do not know what to do with these supper scraps, these pork chop bones with good meat still on them and potato peelings and gravy scraped from the pan, now that Whisker’s old dented, metal dish is gone.
She has been a dressmaker, a traveler, a school teacher, and now a housekeeper for her younger brothers on the ranch their father built.