His father, before the boy was born, had planted forsythia, a border to separate their yard on two sides from the corner of slurry-sealed alleys. “He promised that each April would be stunning,” his mother told him and paused to quietly cough. “But forsythia is a month of beauty and half a year of care.” By now, her private aches were public. Her future, even at rest, was unable to catch its breath. The small yard the forsythia half-enclosed was marred by an eczema of weeds. After her first operation, his mother had taken the latest experimental drug, explaining that miracles were being tested at distant hospitals. After the second surgery, her dresses, in late August, hung over her body like drapes. During the weekend before school began, she held the clothes he would grow into against his chest and legs, dressing him for classes and church for a year, showing him why he needed to furiously study, launching a sermon on pride and envy that ended with her guarantee he would thank her for the yearly lessons provided by the ill-fitting and out of style. When she carried a shirt to the window for close inspection, she declared the cloud-parting weather heavenly. Left standing with arms extended for size, the boy tried to tear his eyes from the stacked layers of seventh-grade clothes-to-come. They looked something like inevitability, like her driving him slowly down the narrow alley past the forsythia-shrouded yard, the light at the corner, as it had been for a year, out and not replaced.
Gary Fincke’s latest flash collection is The History of the Baker’s Dozen (Pelekinesis 2024). His newest book is After Arson: New and Selected Essays (Madville 2025). He is co-editor of the annual anthology Best Microfiction.