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Second Response, by David Milner

24/9/2021

 
The soft wind rises

Filling the void with the sound

Of your whispered name.


He writes the haiku on post-it notes, of yellow, pink, and blue. Places them on desktops, on old, borrowed, or purloined Toshiba laptop screens, in this re-configured office space. Rosa, like assistants through time immemorial, hovers. She looks at Cassidy, scrunching his face inward, at the carpet, which Rosa had brought from a friend; an old or ex lecturer, information she kept from Cassidy. It is tinted beige. One minute he likes it, the next it’s the scrunching his face inward thing. For a moment their eyes meet. The sound of a train crossing the iron bridge rattles the re-configured office space. Noise from the city. Cassidy smiles. Perfect.

Outside of time, this is art’s perspective, its vista. What it brings to the table. Cassidy sits in a swivel chair, imagining how his sister would have looked, who she might have been talking to. He has no way of knowing. Maura was 23 years of age. Rosa’s age now. Rosa will play Maura in the reconstruction.

Rosa is not exactly happy with this idea.

“All you’ll do is sit there.” Cassidy has said.

In photos his sister looked quite stunning in a girl next door type of way. The brotherly comments backed-up with sardonic caveats. Kinda sad. Like, Cassidy never really knew her, or cared. That was then, Rosa guesses.


The soft wind rises

Filling the void with the sound

Of your whispered name.

Old water cooler covered with post-it notes. Framed photo on a desk facing east of Pope John Paul. Waxed yucca plants in lime green ceramic bowls. More post-it notes. Large, plastic round-faced clock fixed at 8:45am. In his mind an unfinished Joan Miró landscape. An office on the edge of eternity.

Maura was estranged from the family. Rebellious, older sister. Amorphous New York rumours. On the periphery of The Strokes’ circle. In pleated micro-minis, promoting their first album.

No-one could say for sure why she was in that office, on that floor, in that building, on that day, at that time.

The installation is a reclamation. A homage. A helpless response. To the impact of loss. ​
Sue Clayton
25/9/2021 05:27:09 am

I'm intrigued, David. I keep thinking 9/11 but the reference to the train throws me.

David Milner
30/9/2021 10:37:45 am

Sorry the train threw you, Sue.


Comments are closed.

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    Friday Flash Fiction is primarily a site for stories of 100 words or fewer, and our authors are expected to take on that challenge if they possibly can. Most stories of under 150 words can be trimmed and we do not accept submissions of 101-150 words.


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    One little further note. Posting and publishing 500-word stories takes a little time if they need to be formatted, too.
    ​Please note that we tend to post longer flash fiction exactly as we find it – wrong spacing, everything.

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