Winner, 2025 Contest for Flash Creative Nonfiction
The cicadas sing summer in the willow trees as I swing on the monkey bars. Across the street, my house is a somber gray face atop a rocky hill. Cars line the driveway. Family from all over New England have gathered to support my mother, but I’ve run away to the playground where I can hang upside down and let the blood roar in my ears.
Two neighborhood girls arrive. A few years older than me, they’re here to smoke and look cool in their bell-bottoms, not play on the jungle gym.
My voice sounds casual as I cling to the slippery metal. “My sister died.” It’s like I’m trying the sentence out, practicing the words to see how they sound. The letters line up heavy in my mind, like the black limousines we rode out to the cemetery.
“Yeah right,” says the first one, the one whose wavy golden hair cascades over the skinny straps of her tank top. She’s my best friend’s sister, and probably the most beautiful person I know.
A maroon sedan backs out of my driveway and I know I’ll need to go home soon. “She did,” I insist, but my almost-ten-year-old voice sounds too eager. “Lisa,” I say. “Her name was Lisa.” The past tense sticks in my throat.
The teenagers don’t answer. They just move away toward the parking lot to enjoy another cigarette and wait for the evening boys to drive by, their silhouettes glorious against a June sky full of promise.
Originally from New England, Annamaria Formichella currently teaches in the English department at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Her creative work has been published in several collections and magazines, including Gyroscope Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Litbreak Magazine, and Anacapa Review. Her dreams include returning to the ocean and writing stories that hit the reader with a quiet crash.
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/David Cosand
