by Amy Marques
When the time came to call her onto the stage to receive her award, the host stuttered and, in the ensuing silence she watched as blankness washed over his face. He had realized what she had always known: he didn’t know her name. None of them did.
She wasn’t written into the stories.
History books are made of heroes, monsters, and the deities that curse and save them. Her work slips between the lines, through the cracks. Goddess of essential nothings.
“I do not need to name our guest of honor for we all have benefited from her steady hand at the tiller.” The awards host paced the stage and talked his way past and around the name he had never bothered to learn.
He was a skilled speaker who could spin whole worlds, but she smiled watching him try and fail to remember even a single example of her actions. Hers was the gift of balance. Of lack of discomfort. Of enough. Left to her own devices, her actions went unnoticed. Her success was measured by close calls, aborted mishaps, and tempered excesses.
She stood, but they couldn’t see her. Not yet.
Over millennia she had taken many forms, but the one she donned most, the one threaded bare by repeated use, was that of gray shadows, visible only to those who cared to look. They weren’t many, but they were devoted students of her craft.
Mothers who felt a little silly for waking up in the middle of the night to make sure covers were still tucked and feet still warm. Fathers who double checked locks and quietly filled car tanks and slipped extra cash into unsuspecting wallets. Caregivers who walked a little slower and met their charges where they were at.
Her followers were the drivers who didn’t honk their horns when a slow pedestrian crossed and made them lose their green light, the grandmothers who did laundry and made dinner for parents who were running on fumes, the old men who whittled quietly until a timid child learned they were a safe person to approach.
She had been surprised when she heard of the nomination. She wondered if it was an elaborate joke. Who could have imagined her in the spotlight? The center of attention?
But it was real. The letter that arrived by courier bore the regal seal.
In the end, she had chosen her gown with care. As she reached the stage at the end of the host’s announcement, she unraveled her cloak of invisibility and revealed a dress of moons that reflected the light of a legion of unsung stars.
Amy Marques grew up between languages and cultures and learned, from an early age, the multiplicity of narratives. She penned three children’s books, barely read medical papers, and numerous letters before turning to short fiction and visual poetry. Her work was nominated for Best of the Net 2023 by Streetcake Magazine and published or forthcoming in journals including Jellyfish Review, Gone Lawn, Star82 Review, and Sky Island Journal. You can read more of her words at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.
Emerge Literary Journal 