This Side of 24
by Kristin Burcham
His last name sounded French, although he was not. Still, he had café au lait eyes and an air of remove, of calm superiority bordering on disdain. She had never experienced that with someone her own age before. She was muddling through her twenties; shouldn’t he be doing the same? She was supposed to meet him and another couple, friends of his, in front of the movie theater. Driving nearer, a bit early, she spotted a bikini shop, a place to delay her arrival, not seem so eager. But as she flicked through stringy Lycra in magenta or lime, she felt unable to try them on; she was shy, with Paul in her mind, to expose her curves—too lush—and her skin—too pale—thinking her body was a distant goal, so dismissive of the beauty of her youth. She rushed back to her shabby car, barely beating the meter. As she pulled out, with a driver waiting to claim the space, another car swerved impatiently, clipped her Toyota and fractured her remaining confidence. She drove home, dazed, leaving Paul waiting. Eventually he called to say that his friends had given him shit about being stood up, suggested that his “date” had been imaginary. She, still shaky, explained what had happened, but he never asked her out again. Later years brought glimpses of his success—celebrated architecture firm, trips to the Galapagos—and left her regretting what she had missed, what the accident had stolen. It was only after living long enough to see that a bikini body guaranteed nothing that she realized she had not missed, she escaped, years of scornful brown eyes that would have made it impossible to attain the quietude she had woven for herself.
Kristin Burcham’s work has appeared in Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose and The Writer’s Chronicle. She received her MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been teaching middle and high school English for thirteen years, doing her best to cultivate future lifelong readers.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “This Side of 24”? I had never tried writing flash fiction until last summer when I joined a writers group on Zoom. At the start of one meeting, they asked each of us for a favorite word, then at the end presented a compiled list. The prompt was “Choose three (or as many as you want) and write a story in a paragraph.” I chose four. It was fun to experience what I’ve often heard: constraint can breed creativity.
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Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
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