Microfiction - We Meet Again
Microfiction is a genre we’ve only recently discovered - there are loads of online articles about the varieties of short fiction - the flash, the sudden, the micro, also known as a drabble. The latter is 100 words or less. It’s a fun form to play with, so do have a go! Please feel free to share any contributions on the theme ‘We Meet Again’ and we’ll add them to this page. Here are a few for starters:
We Meet Again #1
Weeks ago she completed that big clearout he’d been patiently suggesting. She had said goodbye to a ten- bin-bag mountain of clothing and shoes. Cloaked smugly in the feeling she was due a treat and the warm knowledge of a forthcoming party, she trotted round the charity shops. Really, that dress and jacket were too sweet - and those heels were perfect.
‘Jim, what do you think of my new outfit?’ ‘Loved it last year and I still do, dear!’
She smiled. May loved shopping and giving to charity.
We Meet Again #2
Ten years ago he came to the door in the cold, our eyes meeting with gentle wariness. ‘You need….?’ ‘There’s bedbugs at mine and pest control can’t come ‘til Thursday.’’ ‘Right. In the shower with you and I’ll wash your things straight away on a boiling wash.’
First in the spare room, soon he was back in ours, ending my five year solitary reign. By the time the bedbugs were despatched so too the acrimony between us.
We don’t tell people this tale. When our friends asked what brought us back together we wryly smiled - ‘Sometimes it’s the little things.’
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We Meet Again #3
Oatmeal is everywhere– even in her hair. Jan scrubs her face till the damp tissue shreds in her shaking hands.
How does he still get her so angry? That gnarled, bent-double parody of a man in dirty pajamas, knocking the breakfast tray sideways like a petulant toddler, howling.
“Where’s my regular nurse? You’re not the one I want!”
Neither are you, pal.
Yet, in the mirror, he stares back at her. Her face, made of his cheekbones, his scowling brow, his heavy-lidded eyes softening with grief. Tethered to him on a level deeper than memory, or love.
But you’re mine.
-Rachel Walke
