Story Time

by Sarah Russell

 

She was gobsmacked with the thought—she was living a story. A Story! That made her landlady/neighbors/people on the subway and at work characters, mere characters. Her dog could be Toto or Lassie. And she could be anyone—heroine, spy, murderer—Anyone, because it was all a story.

She started writing down pieces of her past. When she was six and traded Johnny a feel inside her panties for a Three Musketeers bar, was she naive victim or apprentice temptress? The teenager who climbed down the trellis to smoke pot with Brian—tomboy Jo March or lovesick Juliette? It simply depended on how she wrote the story.

She started following herself everywhere taking notes, shaping scenes, justifying actions. There were no more sad days—just melancholy musings like Jane Eyre alone on the moors. When she found a dead sparrow, she could hold it close and weep over its hapless demise as sweet Cosette or put down her knitting and show disgust over filthy feathers and maggots as Madame Defarge.

She bought reams of paper, spent hours writing and rewriting her days with different interpretations of her actions, always leaving the scene unresolved since consequences weren’t important, only motivations. Her friends became concerned, but when they questioned her, she would answer one way, then another and another, then leave what she called Le Tableau to write it all down.

It was a little disappointing when, on her way to a mani/pedi as the pampered arm candy of a mobster, she saw herself run down by a UPS delivery truck as she crossed Elm Street. She watched the scene, somewhat dismayed. She had been picturing her death in the roles she created—a tragic heroine caught in a flood trying to rescue a puppy, Lizzie Borden felled by her own axe, reclusive spinster á la Miss Havisham dying in her threadbare parlor where no one would find her for days.

 

Sarah Russell’s poetry and fiction have been published in Kentucky Review, Red River Review, Misfit Magazine, Rusty Truck, Third Wednesday, and many other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry collection I lost summer somewhere was published in April by Kelsay Books. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.

Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.

Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.

Submissions

Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.

Upcoming

05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD