by Keith Woodruff
If she doesn’t stop growing their son, he’ll soon be 8 feet tall. On the bone white trim of the doorway to the kitchen, where she marked his growth for the first six years, she keeps marking it. Welcome to 220 Metz! This charming and two-story is move-in ready and waiting for new owners who aren’t so fucking sad all the time! On the hard days – his birthday, holidays – she grows him. An inch here, a few inches there, proving the things we do for love are rivaled only in their spectacle by the things we do for pain. Inside, you’ll find a bright living space ideal for both relaxing and entertaining friends – unless they’re pricks who ghosted you because your grief makes them totes uncomfortable! One morning, coffee in hand, as the boy’s father walks by, face doughy with sleep, he finally notices their boy is still growing. It’s a remembrance, she will tell him. Everyone grieves differently, she will say, throwing out a line from counseling. Make memories in the genial backyard with plenty of room for outdoor living, planting memorials that don’t grow, and getting drunk while fretting how your husband’s face reminds you of the best and worst thing that ever happened to you. He would be nine today. She knows how it looks, but nobody is looking. She steps onto the squeaky little foot stool; on tip toes, raises the pencil as high as she can. When you’re not crippled by grief, and can crawl out of bed, you’re just a hop-skip from popular shopping and dining options, and within walking distance of a great children’s park. Keep an eye on that pond where kids feed the ducks. When they move out, she leaves the doorframe unpainted. Takes the pencil. If the walls could talk, they wouldn’t say a word, not a word; but when wind blows through the cracks just right, they might hum the lullaby she sang about how, always forgetting the night before, the shy moonlight keeps falling in love with a lonely pond over and over again.
Keith Woodruff lives in San Antonio, TX with a backyard full of moody tomato plants. His poetry has appeared in RHINO, New World Writing Quarterly and is forthcoming in DMQ. His flash and micro have appeared in Wigleaf, Bending Genres, JMWW and is forthcoming in Does it Have Pockets?, Pithead Chapel, Heavy Feather Review, Identity Theory and NUNUM. Read him in Best Small Fictions 2017, 2019 and at www.keithawoodruff.com. He was awarded 2018 Pushcart Prize.
Emerge Literary Journal 