Is the news too much? Here's a tiny story about a love lost to get you through dark times. You're welcome
"Under Black Light" by Meg Pokrass was just what I needed to get through this week
Friends, I’m exhausted by the tragedy unfolding in Israel and Gaza, by the social media posts, by the anger, by the hurt. It can be hard to imagine how we will get out of this but one day we will. Until then, take a moment and read this delicately heart-breaking story by the uber-talented Meg Pokrass. I’m a huge fan. Lucky for you she offers writing workshops.
Under Black Light
By Meg Pokrass
You would hate it if you knew how often I apply lipstick now that you’re gone. I’m putting it on, like, every five minutes to get through the next fifteen, though I know they use fish scales to make it, and it’s like killing fish to put on lipstick for no reason. Nobody usually sees my champagne-grape stained lips except myself, and two adorable medical professionals.
If I had been a cat you probably would have kept me forever, even with an incurable disease. I think about that every time I clean the litter pan, especially late at night. I clean it too often because it makes the cats love each other more, and also because I can smell how sad I really am in the unpleasant odor of their piss, which I’ve read glows under black light.
In bed, my eyelids behave like cheap polyester drapes, unable to keep out the light. I wake from dreams about us walking nowhere… covered with butterflies. I can taste you with my feet the way butterflies taste leaves and flowers. Without you here, I notice too much about how the town is changing, new money moving in, teenage girls with their rubbery, flat stomachs. They walk around cold-eyed, like billboards about nothing.
Sometimes, I drive to the Taste It where they use organic bags. As I shop, I try not to gawk at girl’s stomachs like I used to try not to stare at perfect front lawns. If I had a flat stomach, and a perfect lawn, and if I were not dying – you might have stayed here on my sofa, drinking beer and burping to mark your territory.
I’m a sloth, it’s what we had in common. And the fact that our left eyes feel much more connected to the intuitive parts of our brains than our right eyes do!
Also, the first time we made love, I remember how we talked about the fact that bulls are really color blind, and how a red garment has nothing to do with their rightful anger. How just having to cope with a cape being waved at you by some short murderer dressed up like a kid on Halloween would be bad enough.
The young doctor took my pulse this morning, prescribed yoga. He had stubble on his shin, and Teva sandals—like you. This guy, this doctor, made me blush when he said he liked my cockroach tattoo. He walked out to get the nurse, held her hand and brought her in to see it. She had a cute hair cut, neon blue eye shadow. She laughed, said random. I told them why cockroaches fascinate me, that they can live for weeks with their heads cut off.
They looked at each other, seemed to connect without touching—as if this were all about them.
(Reprinted from THE DOG SEATED NEXT TO ME (Pelekinesis, 2019))
MEG POKRASS is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in three Norton anthologies of flash including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023; Wigleaf Top 50; and hundreds of literary journals including Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, Washington Square Review, Split Lip, storySouth, and Passages North. Her new collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories by Meg Pokrass, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in late 2024. Pokrass teaches regular online writing flash fiction and microfiction workshops. You can find out about them here.
Fantastic. Every. Single. Line. Fantastic.
Man, the ending of that story flat-out nails it. Meg never disappoints.