Debi Orton's Pick:
Next Time
by Erin McKnight
"The sparse, simple language delivers an emotional punch. Nicely done flash."
My words grow wings.
As they flutter away, she fumbles to catch them — to secure them in the dark space of her clasped hands.
My utterance quivers against her palms. If I hadn't said it, she might have laughed that way she does without making a sound. The bridge of her nose would have creased, emphasizing brown freckles that dust her skin like cinnamon, and she'd have erupted in puffs of breath.
But on this Sunday my words reverberate inside an empty womb. She fears that if she surrenders to them, the echo of our loss will overwhelm her hope.
So we walk through the city's labyrinth of streets and she talks of our daughter, of the peanut butter cookies they would have someday rolled together. While they baked, she'd have held her up to the kitchen sink and struggled to remove the sticky batter from beneath small, soft fingernails.
The last time my words were in her grasp and pushing against her fingers, she told me it would have been a boy. They would have baked pies; her hands hovering above his, as he stretched the long strips of dough to form a lattice over the apples.
She tries to keep the words close for a little while longer, but we both know that they will slip out, because her body struggles to hold.
And so she releases them. My words lift away from us with a natural ease, because although I said it wasn't meant to be this time it doesn't mean she'll always bake alone.
We move between tall buckets of callas that sprout from the sidewalk. Exploring the trumpeting flowers' graceful curves she settles on a white bouquet that has yet to unfold.
She cradles the lilies, and I run my fingers down her arm. "We'll try again," I say.
Born in Scotland and raised in South Africa, Erin McKnight now lives in Virginia. She is an assistant editor for The Rose & Thorn Literary E-Zine. Her writing has appeared, most recently, in Siren: A Literary & Art Journal, Ginosko Literary Journal, Diddledog, The Flask Review, 971 MENU, and The Bergen Street Review. Erin is currently working on her MFA in fiction, and teaches an online class in flash fiction for the Long Story Short School of Writing.