Christy Birmingham is a poet, author and freelance writer in British Columbia, Canada. Her debut poetry collection Pathways to Illumination is available exclusively at Redmund Productions. If you haven’t been by her blog Poetic Parfait yet, check it out. You can also find Christy on Twitter.
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Shoveling Conversation
We stood, I threw onions, we never left… in our minds.
It was Thursday, and we weren’t any more drunk than usual. Only a few bottles of Merlot in and already Alex was throwing words my way that amounted to a hit that felt like a shovel to the face.
“You can’t tell me that,” he said. “You told me – you said you wanted to give her up for adoption. How was I to know you didn’t mean it?”
I didn’t hear anything other than give her up for adoption. His mouth moved in ways that I wish I had never felt on my body.
I threw the onion I had been cutting up at the kitchen counter at him. It hit his left ear and he looked at me with the astonishment I wish I had received months ago.
I didn’t know if my tears were true or fake, like our love. Either way, the knife in my hand wasn’t keeping anyone safe around here, and my wine glass was less than halfway full.
©2014 Christy Birmingham
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Sarah says: Thank you so much, Christy, for guest storytelling this month. Your piece of flash fiction illustrates so accurately the breakdown in communication that can happen between males and females just because their brains are wired-up differently. I wonder how many times in history men have said to women “how was I to know you didn’t mean it?”.
You can find the links to previous guest storyteller posts at https://sarahpotterwrites.com/guest-storytellers-2/
Sarah Potter Writes 