Flash the Court

Tag: Flash Essay

  • “Adrift” by Tracie Adams

    “Adrift” by Tracie Adams

    September is the season of gentle remembrance. Summer’s over and school’s back in session. Elementary or university, our children resume their inexorable paths toward more independence and, consequently, more distance, from us, their parents. In “Adrift,” Tracie Adams captures moments anew: what would we give to relive each (im)perfect family memory, just one last time?  —Court Harler

    Maybe it was the worst of times on that houseboat. The air conditioning was broken, forcing us to retreat to the sundeck to escape the sweltering heat of the living room, an Easy-Bake Oven that smelled like a urinal cake. Maybe it was the best of times, the perfect ending to a vacation that began at a waterpark resort in Phoenix, where my husband and I watched our teens swoosh through slides, shouting this is awesome!

    Maybe it was awesome. Or maybe it was another unblemished day soon to disappear as they left for college, marriage, their own lives. Like the day we explored a graveyard in a ghost town called Tombstone, its markers straight out of an old Western. Or when we drove ATVs through desert sunsets melting over Sedona’s red rocks, etching our names in stone, eating pizza under stars. Or when we held our breath in awe at the Grand Canyon’s south rim stretching as wide as a mother’s arms.

    Maybe the man who gave us directions to the marina at Lake Mead wasn’t a liar. Or maybe he was the best kind—don’t bring anything, we’ve got it all—which turned out to be hot dogs, Pop-Tarts, and energy drinks. The camp store shelves were bare. For days, we floated under a Nevada sun, drinking Red Bulls in a rooftop hot tub, where our words were movie lines and our jokes secrets shared with the galaxies.

    Maybe the day we spent slithering through red mud at Slide Rock Park was delightful. But maybe it’s the suffering—the absences, the gaps—that forged us in a crucible and gifted us our golden memories. Maybe years later when I say Arizona trip, we’ll all burst into stories and laughter. Magic will hang like a velvet curtain between us and the world.

    Maybe the days we had so little were the times we had the most. Perhaps our true strength emerged in our weakest moments, struggling, burning like chaff, devouring Pop-Tarts in a floating gas station bathroom.

    Maybe it was never about the perfectly choreographed moments like birthday parties, Christmas lights, or Thanksgiving tables. Maybe it’s the laughter echoing over the water, stars shining in bright eyes, and the stories that still float between us like driftwood.

    TRACIE ADAMS is the author of Our Lives in Pieces. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for Wigleaf Top 50, and published widely in literary magazines, including SoFloPoJo, Fictive Dream, Cleaver Magazine, TRASH CAT LIT, and others. Follow her on Twitter @1funnyfarmAdams.

    Featured image by Dulcey Lima, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic

    “Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic

    “Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic is part poem, part essay; part dream, part terror. Hebe is the ancient goddess of the prime of life, but “when you’re dying, nostalgia kicks in the way desire once did.” The narrator journeys near and far, searching for chardonnay and ceviche, but also seemingly never leaves her own kitchen. There, she brews espresso and spins stories. There, eventually, she lives and lives and lives, thank the goddesses.  —Court Harler

    a love poem for Brent Terry

    Under the knife, under the needle. I can’t even say I was determined to survive. The reaper had followed me for so long, in different disguises, with an impressive array of tactics, I was not certain I’d outwit him again. I hoped for the best and planned for the worst. I took my medicine. 

    When you’re dying, nostalgia kicks in the way desire once did. Hard and hungry. Tantalizing flickers of foolish yesterdays: I had my middle finger to the world and an arsenal of dreams left to shatter. Then, there, driving through Dakota. The stars from the back of the pickup. Patti Smith growling her poems from the front cab radio. A bottomless bottle of bourbon. Now, here, you are a deer caught in the headlights. You’ve been caught with your pants down. Life has you by the balls.

    When you are careening along that winding hairpin cliff, the Pacific Coast Highway, everything you know unravels. You are unbecoming. You let go of unfinished things. The details whir past in a slurry, intangible. I took that highway again, later, further south, in Mexico, on a bus, splattering iguanas. Reeling into the turquoise forever with a gone friend, who was, then, there, mirror Ray-Bans and eggshell linen trousers. I prayed my heart out for the driver. And we made it to the sea.

    There was more: the portent glow of a bright moon and the sound of silence in the southern swamps. The bats in Barcelona. Their swooping, and the swallows.

    What you find here in the valley of the shadow of death is how every moment matters. The beauty, of course, yes, sublime: Spanish guitar; pastels de nata; head-back laughing; good chardonnay that tastes of cigars. But also: every single fucking hurt and hell is a magic spell.

    And then, sometimes, you come back. You find yourself in the kitchen, measuring out Lively Up espresso beans, getting ready for work. You find yourself at a table with good friends, slurping ceviche and lime. And you realize you really don’t have a clue how you got there. But here we are.

    I grew so much closer to God. And so much further away from knowing what that even means.

    There were times when I didn’t know who I was. And then I did. And sometimes, I felt like I had always known. Sometimes when I was flickering in the liminal, I saw the ghost light: beacons in the dark loam that slowly swallowed me, the lighthouse that was a friend.

    I had spells where I thought about strange things. Like, what if, you already were? What if your whole life was really the story of your unbecoming?

    LORETTE C. LUZAJIC reads, writes, and teaches flash. She is the founder of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry.

    Featured image by The New York Public Library, courtesy of Unsplash.