FFP#1 – La Abuelita

See la abuelita sitting all alone on the park bench? She’s the one sucking on a tangerine. She used to bring her grandchildren with her and a packed lunch of taquitos and sliced pepinos drizzled with lemon juice and sprinkled with salt, but ever since her kitchen caught on fire no one asks her to “watch los niños, por favor.”

Today her back aches and her fingers are stiff and she thinks she’d like to see someone get hurt. Maybe see someone fall under the merry-go-round. Maybe that little girl over there, the one with the beautiful blonde hair. Yes, she’d like to watch that wild mane of curls tangle around the contraption’s base. She imagines herself screaming as the little girl’s scalp is pulled away from her head like a ripe banana peel. That would be exciting, la abuelita thinks. That would be a story my family would like me to tell them.

“Please, please, please,” she mumbles, like a prayer of petition.

She stays on that bench all day, watching and waiting, but no one gets hurt.

The afternoon fades into evening and it’s time for her to head home. She remembers when she and her husband (God rest his soul) strolled through the park together, hand-in-hand, so hopeful back then. She thinks of those days, and she knows her husband would laugh if he heard how she left a dishtowel next to a hot burner. “Un accidente!” he would say. “Just a silly accident. Could happen to anybody.”

La abuelita hurries on home. She’ll spend the rest of the night alone, watching her telenovelas, the flicker of the television light licking the empty pockets of her face.

FFP#0 – Flash Fiction Mondays

Starting Monday, December 28th, I’ll be posting a new, unpublished flash fiction piece each week.

Wish me luck.