I know it’s time even before I answer, I pull on my clothes while you make coffee, inhale the coffee while you shower, pace the house while you dress, “Come Now” repeating in my head, you snap like a mad man when I tell you to hurry, we sit in mad traffic, drive in mad silence until my cellphone rings again; “She’s gone,” the nurse says, and I yell like a mad wife, and you yell even madder; that she was your mother, not mine—then we drive in mad silence until you whisper; that you didn’t want to see her die, and I squeeze your hand, your fingers melting into mine, and try not to think of her dying alone—try not to wonder if I’ll die alone too.
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Karen Crawford currently lives in the City of Angels where she exorcises demons one word at a time. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Potato Soup Journal, Sledgehammer Lit, Flash Boulevard, Reflex Fiction, The Ekphrastic Review, Six Sentences among others. You can find her on Twitter @KarenCrawford_
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image: Kelsey Zimmerman is a writer and artist from Michigan currently living in Iowa. Her work is published or forthcoming in Nurture: A Literary Journal, Ghost City Review, Unlost Journal, and The Indianapolis Review.
Rejection Letters 