Flash Fiction by Bonnie Meekums
I Don’t Believe in HEA
He’s perfect in every way, and last night he said he loved you.
You love the smell of him. The hardness of his muscles. The oh-so-gentle way he gathers your hair in his hands and brings your face to his. The sound of his voice, soft and low like a baritone singing pianissimo. The tattoo on his upper arm that reminds you of home. The taste of your juices on his tongue. The melting of your bodies, so you no longer know where you begin and end.
But your heart has more cracks than substance. It can’t contain this heavy flow of love without exploding, leaving a destructive dark red mess no one will clear up.
As you lick the bitter envelope, the sound of his gentle, regular breathing floats from the bedroom you’ve shared these past six, beatific months. Your tear-logged eyes prevent you from seeing his name, scratched using the fountain pen he bought you – a gift to be left where it lies.
Scraping the back of your hand across your face (you don’t deserve gentleness), you prop the letter by his cafetière. Then you creep from his apartment, shoes in hand. You whisper the door shut, and melt into the night.
Love and Dance
Do you remember, after we made love all night long, you asking me if I had to choose between dance and sex which would I go for, and me saying, without missing a beat, dance?
And do you remember three weeks later, me saying I was late and you said how can that be, we’ve been careful, and I said sometimes accidents happen, and you said bummer, maybe we should have stuck to dance?
And do you remember when you held our daughter, Maisie, for the first time, your arms were the only bit of you not shaking as you cried and vowed you would love her forever, you’d even die for her, and you’d teach her to dance as soon as she could stand?
And do you remember us smooch-dancing in the kitchen and two-year-old Maisie sliding between us so she could feel us all around, dancing her?
And do you remember us getting married, and you letting Maisie, now six, dance on your feet, then her stealing the show when she stepped onto the floor holding your hands and danced a perfect quickstep?
And do you remember us holding hands in the audience, watching our daughter’s final piece at London Contemporary Dance School, and you saying, all casual, there was a lump on your neck?
And do you remember reminding me to let our students know you couldn’t make it to rehearsals, as the ambulance raced through back streets?
And do you remember, just before you closed your eyes, you saying you loved Maisie and me, always have, always will, then holding my hand as firmly as you could, looking straight into my eyes, and saying I should find a new dance partner?
And do you remember, after you closed your eyes, the TV above your bed showing West Side Story, your thumb and middle finger making the tiniest of movements towards each other as the Jets clicked, then me holding your now-limp hand as the music and the dance and the love saw you on your way?
That Time When You and Me Hung Out Together Like We Weren’t Really Interested
It’s hot and dusty and I’m wishing I was by the sea, but I’m hobbling past Paddington Station in the rush hour, my nostrils assaulted by sweaty bodies, stale beer bottles strewn like mines, moulding food oozing from bins, and last night’s condoms gracing my path. I look down at my feet, encased in plastic sandals that make them swell and come out in a painful rash. Soon, I’ll escape my job selling cigarettes and sweets on Victoria Station, where last night a drunk picked up a wooden chair and aimed it at me. With no one around to save me and concentrated hydrochloric acid burning my throat, I was glad the alcohol in his system made his muscles too weak to follow through on lift, aim, and lob.
Then I see you. Or maybe you see me first, I’m not sure. You and I, always only friends. Never lovers because we each had our own loves. Always way too cool to say we liked each other.
When I went to Canada to volunteer as a construction worker on a Mi’kmaq reservation I let you slip out of my life like dust off my body at the end of the day, swilling down the plug hole with the shower water. But now I’m back. And here, out of thousands of people rushing around, hundreds of miles away from where we met as students, you are. And my heart does a little dance.
I tell you my boyfriend and I are over, and that’s why I’m here in central London, to get away from him, but pretty soon I’ll be moving out to the sticks, to teach at my old school. We laugh that as a science graduate, I’ll be teaching speech and drama. You tell me you and Sue split too.
My dancing heart does a pirouette, but I mustn’t let you know because I’m certain you’ll think I’m too needy. Instead, I say Moi broke up with Ger, and let’s you, me and Moi meet up on the Old Caledonia for a drink.
As we say goodbye, I have no idea we’ll become lovers. I have no idea we’ll lose touch again when once more I volunteer, this time to build schools in Ghana. I have no idea that, after our summer affair, in which we never profess love, you will marry the other woman you’re seeing because she seems to need you whereas I’m wildly independent. I have no idea we’ll each have two kids with other loves. I have no idea that fifteen years after our summer of not-love you’ll once again bounce into my life, this time hundreds of miles North, in Yorkshire. And I have no idea that that time, it will be for keeps.
The Risks of Baking with Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup
Take Joan Cook and place her in the Tate and Lyle factory in West Ham, deaf to her mother’s protestations that she’s too good to become factory fodder, with their fridge and Ford 10, and their caravan at Burnham-on-Crouch. Blend her with the other sugar girls, fashion, and friendship. Then whizz her round the dance floor with a dark-eyed squaddie called Sam, who whispers honeyed promises. Melt their bodies as he tosses her around in a lindy hop, ignoring the BBC’s prohibition of such dangerous music. The next day, when she’s cooled down, put Joan back to work, dodging questions about how far she let Sam go. Set a timer for expansion. Watch Joan pick over memory-crumbs as she writes, destroys, and writes a letter to her sweet soldier overseas. Rest Joan’s hands on her belly to feel soft kicks and flicks, as she savors a golden syrup sandwich, and the sweet memory of dancing with her beau.
Bonnie Meekums is a British writer whose flash fictions appear in, among other places, Ellipsis Zine, Tiny Molecules, Reflex Press, Ad Hoc Fiction, Briefly Zine, and The Dribble Drabble Review. Bonnie lives in Greater Manchester, UK, where she shares a house with an unpredictable number of humans, grows disobedient vegetables, and finds inspiration in the hills near her home. She also travels alarming distances now and then to see loved ones in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Website and newsletter sign-up: https://bonniemeekums.weebly.com/
Flash Boulevard is edited by Francine Witte. Banner photograph Wes Candela.
Flash Boulevard 