by Meg Pokrass

On a cold winter night she poured wine and listened to a rustling outside the window as she stood waiting for the darkness to help. She was suspicious of light and craved winter. She had long been envious of the kind of flowers that bloom in darkness, as they were blooming for each other now. 

Through the window, standing outside in the rain, he loved to watch her, sitting alone in their living room, waiting for him to come in. He painted her like this, waiting. Her love for him a building that he would never be able to walk inside of. How he could paint this was standing alone, watching. In his paintings, she was his bright red barn. The roof of her hair nested up with swallows. 

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Meg Pokrass is the author of 7 collections of flash fiction and prose poetry, and her work has appeared in hundreds of literary publications and best-of anthologies, including the Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50, and forthcoming in a 2023 Norton anthology “Flash Fiction America” edited by Sherrie Flick, James Thomas, and John Dufresne. Meg is the Founding Editor of the Best Microfiction anthology series. She lives in Northern England and wears many hats.

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