Whose are you?
Pubbed at Friday Flash Fiction 2020 (by-line L.W. Smolen)
To the crack in his windshield, she said, “Oh, I think sometimes they do...find dropped crumbs of esteem outside themselves, I mean. But they’re just little birds pecking at a trail that fades in the panic of dark aloneness – where, for proof that they are cherished even just a weensie bit – by anyone at all – they check their iPhone messages again.”
Back on their first date, he wondered what a girl like her was doing with him. Even as his phone vibrated in his pocket, she explained why she’d never again buy “one of those creepy hive portals” – a Smart Phone. Saying she loved the smell of Bondo, the low, purring shelter of her voice made it easy for him to admit he lived in this old Ford.
But today, he’d planned to propose to her, ached to, ached to live in her firelight. He had the ring in a little box in his left pocket – where he fidgeted with his phone.
Today, just like he’d planned, they sat together in his rusting van at Vista House. They could see hundreds of feet below them, down onto the expanse of the river’s hot, sandy shoals called Bridal Veil – heated by the summer sun and by what had happened between them there so naturally, so wonderfully, so – often.
Yet sometimes he was terrified of the accuracy of the incisions her intellect often made. Today, when she said that, knowing in his heart of hearts she was right, he didn’t dare move his right hand – to reach out for hers. Not after that. His feeling was that if he did move his hand, she’d witch him out onto the pavement where her eyes would dare him into his dream of walking beside her ever after, where he knew he’d set fire to his van, where holding hands, they’d burst with joy. It felt exactly like that.
Instead, with his left, he checked his messages.