Flash Fiction : 50 Words and Done
Flip flops.
Slushed lemonades for thirty cents.
I pull out the wedgie from last year’s suit.
Why can’t I be Brooke? Bow ties on her hips. Triangle swaths prettily on her chest. Scrunchie ponytail at the crown of her head.
SPLASH.
I slip, the cold water rushes up my nose.
Happy birthday! We’re going rafting in Colorado. Fast paced adventure with loads of epic rapids. 1000 mile drive. Sweet cabin. Sunrise hike. Our guide, Mike, offers helmets. Paddles out. Everywhere rapids recede into rocks. Mike says Colorado is in a drought year. White water rafting turns into a lazy river ride.
She learned about kids without splash pads and water fountains. After school, she filled containers from our house and biked to the post office.
On the curb, in tears, “Mommy, I don’t have money to send them water.”
Today, it’s her first day at UNICEF, bringing water to the children.
The day fertilizer was delivered, he showered it down hollering,
“Girl, watch our corn grow.”
His eyes always checked the skyline for clouds. Fallow fields all around, only thing growing fast is cancer. Rain healed the crops. Now I wheel Dad into the storms praying it will heal him too.
“Let ‘um rip!”
The shout resounds past a row of matching houses.
1, 2, 3
Sprinklers blast water skyward. Ten children line the edge of the first yard. Charge!
Twenty feet dash into misted grass. Only green knees and twisted bathing suits tell anyone this is not the first run of the day.