Flash the Court

Tag: Structure

  • “Transitions” by Jennifer Braunfels

    “Transitions” by Jennifer Braunfels

    Writers must debate and navigate endless choices. In “Transitions,” a flash creative nonfiction essay by Jennifer Braunfels, the writer has chosen a particular point of view (second person) and a specific structure (a series of transition words) to guide the telling of a painful, powerful story. Ultimately, those craft choices enable the writer to express the inexpressible.  —Court Harler

    Now, I have something to tell you. You may want to sit down. 

    Soon, you’ll be diagnosed with cancer.

    In turn, everything will change.

    For example, instead of taking that school trip to Germany with your son that’s been planned for two years, you’ll begin chemotherapy.

    Yes, the ticket says you’re flying out tomorrow morning.

    But instead, at 3:30 a.m., you’ll drive your son to the transportation center, where he’ll board that plane without you.

    Of course, you’ll put on a brave face on the drive to Portland, telling him how much fun he’ll have. You’ll try to sound upbeat, even though you’re drowning in a storm of grief.

    Finally, you’ll arrive. Park. Help your son unload his suitcase. Ask him if he wants you to go in and help get him settled. He’ll say no, but he means yes. You know this. But because you’re about to break, you hug him. Then leave him.

    Unbeknownst to you, while you’re sobbing on the drive home, he’ll experience his first panic attack. Alone. A stranger will catch his limp body as it slumps to the floor. A detail he won’t share with you for weeks because “you already had enough going on.”

    At home, you’ll unpack your suitcase. Throw fistfuls of clothes around the bedroom in a frenzy, screaming.

    Then comes the first round of chemo.

    Later, with that poison snaking its way through you, you’ll become weak. Your mouth will taste of metal. There’ll be nausea that’s so intense, it’ll be hard to put into words for your husband, who is on the phone with the cancer center explaining your symptoms, because he’s convinced you’re actually dying.

    Sadly, for months, you’ll be bedridden. Not having enough strength to climb the stairs to your bedroom, you’ll take up residence in the office on the first floor. A prison without bars.

    As a result of treatment, you’ll become dependent on others for everything. Rides. Bathing. Cooking. Walking. A dependence you’ll detest.

    Eventually, they’ll cut your boobs off. You’ll awake from anesthesia, feeling like you have a truck parked on your chest. Four times daily, you’ll empty the surgical drain tubes jutting out of you.

    Next comes radiation five days a week for five weeks. Your skin will blister and boil.

    Understandably, you’ll have lows.

    However, there will also be highs.

    For instance, ringing the bell on the last day of chemo. Feeling stubble on your bald scalp. You’ll take a school trip with your son his senior year—this time to Iceland.

    Accordingly, your life will forever be in two segments, like lightning splitting a tall tree down the middle. Everything in two categories: Before cancer. And after.

    But you’re going to be okay. I promise.

    After, you’ll find joy in simple things. Uneventful days. Moonlit nights. Sunlight streaking across a wooden floor in the afternoon.

    Until then, know that I’ll be with you the entire time. I’ve got you.

    JENNIFER BRAUNFELS lives in Maine. Her first novel comes out in the spring of 2026 through Apprentice House Press. Her work has appeared in The Masters Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Stonecoast Review, and various other places. She lives with her husband, children, and unruly dog, Sissy.

    Featured image by Claudio Schwarz, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Bullet List for My Aged Kidnapper” by Patricia Q. Bidar

    “Bullet List for My Aged Kidnapper” by Patricia Q. Bidar

    “Bullet List for My Aged Kidnapper” begins with a gun and ends with a song. With a list form, Patricia Q. Bidar leads us down the long dark alleyway of time, where traumatic recollections ricochet off “bathroom sink[s]” and “stucco neighborhoods.” Both a prose poem and flash essay, Bidar’s hybrid piece seeks a semblance of peace, but does not grant absolution.  —Court Harler

    I did not provide my parents’ phone number for you to demand money they didn’t have. I provided made-up digits, only coming clean with your gun to my skull.

    I did not tell the police the whole story. Safe at the hotel where I worked, I answered their dark blue queries. Behind their eyes I discerned that I wasn’t the kind of victim they had to care about.

    • Did not disclose I’d been raped
    • Did not throw away my underpants, which remained unwashed at the bottom of the hamper until your sentencing day, when I torched them in the bathroom sink
    • Did not retain my name, fearful of being found
    • I did not have a safe relationship for decades. I scraped together abject connections—men who were beneath me, cocaine, weed, alcohol—sinkholes of regret

    I didn’t argue when men accused—the rare times I talked of it—Crutch! Fabrication! What they really meant was, What the hell you expect me to do?

    • I don’t leave my shutters open at night
    • Or during the day
    • I have not forgotten what I learned: sexual violence, like politically motivated torture, is human and intimate
    • Did not look for you until decades passed

    Once, you brutalized me. Now you are an old man on a dismal patio in the same stucco neighborhood as before. I am an old woman, in faraway but similar environs. We both arise early for the senior discount day at the market. We falter on stiff hips. We wait overlong before we INSERT CARD! and QUICKLY WITHDRAW YOUR CARD!

    At home, we rest our eyes. We doze. Outside our front windows, people flirt, fight, fling food wrappers on our patchy lawns or in our gutters. We mutter profanity to the weeds. Sing aloud, sometimes.

    PATRICIA Q. BIDAR is a native of San Pedro, California, with family roots across the American Southwest. Her work has appeared in Wigleaf, Atticus Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Little Patuxent Review, Waxwing, and Pithead Chapel. She lives with her husband and dog in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Featured image by Mathias Reding, courtesy of Unsplash.