Cheryl Pappas
I met you there
and I’m after the impossible place, the blank place, the place before I saw you, before you cast your eyes over me at the seaside feast table, where I was only because my rich sister told me I should get out more, before you—with your shaggy dog look and caressing smile, almost boyish, that showed me you were at home in the world and the world was your home—looked at me as if I were a glowing thing, a stick that lights up at night, before you said And who are you? and I negated a reply in the shock between my legs and the sudden feeling of being clean underneath the tiny granules of sand pinpricking all over my skin, before erosion overtook me as you poured more wine into my empty glass.
Cheryl Pappas
Cheryl Pappas is the author of the flash fiction collection The Clarity of Hunger, published by word west press (2021). Her flash has appeared in Swamp Pink, Wigleaf, Hunger Mountain, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. She is a 2023 MacDowell Fellow and a recipient of a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant in fiction. Her website is www.cherylpappas.net.