Especially on Fridays, we like to play at Tweetspeak with flash fiction. While we’re hard pressed to find a mutually-agreed upon definition of the genre, it’s safe to say flash fiction is a short short story–a beginning, middle, end, with actual development of characters, but done with a minimalist’s dream for word economy. With nothing more to go on than our February “purple” theme, here’s what flashed for Darrelyn Saloom. Maybe you’d like to try?

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Wendell threw the butt of his broken rifle into the river and struck out for home by following the shore. His ruse-of-a-hunting trip had left him emptier than his mother’s passing.

He’d miss her, his disapproving mother. Though his mind did not wander now to thoughts of her lifeless face but to Emilie, his ball and chain.

Emilie’s tilted-back head and half-opened mouth when he’d push inside her set fire to his boots through layers of stink and mud and memories he feared might buckle his knees.

Purple moonlight glowed in ripples across the Mississippi. Lavender raised the sun. Then February surrendered to March, in muddy tracks of what had to be done.

Photo by Luis Argerich, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Darrelyn Saloom, co-author of My Call to the Ring: A Memoir of a Girl Who Yearns to Box.

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Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $5.99 — Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In February we’re exploring the theme Purple, Plum and Indigo.