Flurry
by Lydia Gwyn
I dig holes for snowdrop bulbs. A song of psalms, over and over. Turning and turning. I plant so many bulbs that when spring arrives, the hill will become a snowbank. By that time, I’ll be a different version of myself. Patient and pauseful. One who listens more. One who notices. My daughter’s ponytail curling on itself, her pretty, open face. The sachet rooms of orange light in my house. My husband playing guitar until the cords go slant in my brain. The sound of my son on the phone with a friend, pacing as he talks, like his father. I place each bulb in its hole, a flurry of them, and remember other fall days years ago, when I was in college and visiting my parents’ home for Thanksgiving break. Football cheer on the TV, and the smell of onions, buttered potatoes, the boiling, baking air. My mother assembling pumpkin pies, pricking the bottom crust with a fork. I was always in-love with some boy or other. Waiting for their calls. How I wish those lovers had loved more. Snowdrops have such small blooms. I picture how these on the hill will bud and open, dangling like strange opioids or like the tips of someone’s fingers dipping sugar from a bowl.
Lydia Gwyn is the author of the flash fiction collections: You’ll Never Find Another (2021, Matter Press) and Tiny Doors (2018, Another New Calligraphy). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in DMQ Review, The Best Microfictions 2024, Appalachian Places, Elm Leaves Journal, Fractured Lit, F(r)iction, The Florida Review, and others. A selection of pieces from her new collection “Emptiness, Standing Still” is available in Issue 22 of Ravenna Press’s Triples Series. She lives with her family in East Tennessee, where she works as an academic librarian.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Flurry”? I often write from prompt words, and “Flurry” incorporates five of them, including “snowdrop.” I’m always surprised by how prompt words influence my writing and the paths they open for a story or poem. In this instance, one of the prompt words became the organizing principle of the piece, providing the structure for the entire work.
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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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