Sunrise: Flash Fiction
Sometimes when my brain is spiraling around, and I need to write because if I don’t I’ll turn into a raging b-word, I turn to flash fiction. I got the spark of this character while I was watching the sunrise this morning and thinking about my mother. February 8 marked three years since her death, and on February 13 she would have been 90. So it’s been a week. Grief sneaks up on me, doesn’t pop out of closets at the times I would have predicted. But she was the one who taught me that grief could just be like that. Thanks, Mom. [Flash disclaimer: Since for me, this discipline is of-the-moment, I don’t edit much.]
Four in the morning found her restless, chest tight, aching to howl at the moon. As it had for the last few nights. At first she tried to ignore it, did her deep breathing exercises, thought it would pass. But it would not. Finally the grief decided for her. She made a thermos of coffee and got in her car and drove to the highest spot in town, a bluff over the river, and parked herself on a bench there, as if some compassionate soul would know that when other people came up here to howl at the moon, they would eventually want a place to sit.
And there she sat, breathing the predawn air, watching a garbage scow slide along the river and underneath the bridge, surprised at how much she could see in the dark, once her eyes adjusted. A light wind rustling the branches of nearby trees. Night creatures heading to their burrows after last call. She closed her eyes and focused on the feel of the cool sweet air on her face, the hum of the distant traffic, the early-morning industry clocking in for another day.
The dark began to lighten from dull gray to rosy glow to flaming scarlet. She was always a girl who loved a sunrise in all its permutations, but the treeline behind her house blocked most of the show. And in that moment adrenaline began pumping through her body, something like joy in her heart, a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She thought of her tripod, her digital camera, her lenses, at home gathering dust. The phone camera wouldn’t do it justice. But she knew she would be back. Tomorrow, the next day, and the next.