strands
  • Home
  • Competitions
    • Strands International Flash Fiction Competition >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Submit
    • Water - Short Story (May 31, 2017) >
      • Results
      • Important Dates
      • Rules
    • Fire - Short Story (Nov 30, 2016) >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Important Dates
  • Contact
  • Call for Submissions
  • Lit Sphere
    • Novels >
      • Mrs. Saville by Ted Morrissey
      • Shueli's Star by Anna Sujatha Mathai
    • Poetry
    • Visual Art
    • Short Fiction
    • Creative Nonfiction
    • Reviews
    • Interviews
Strands Publishers

LIT SPHERE

Ezine

All The Leaves

2/27/2020

0 Comments

 
Short Fiction ~ Rachel J Fenton
                                                         
​(Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition -6)


My neighbour waits for her husband by the tree at the end of their drive. They have no car. She has parked herself there. My neighbour is about seventy, is making art out of stillness, but has a level of fitness I am enviable of in my thirties. My neighbour’s husband is maybe a decade older than her, has a physical inability to look anywhere other than at the leaves she is pointing to.
The tree is the same as those growing in their other neighbour’s property, on their left; there’s no other living thing in my neighbour’s back yard. Mine, on the other hand, is a right meadow of wildflowers: scarlet pimpernel, herb Robert, daisies, black medic, birdsfoot trefoil, vetch, and purple clover, like dropped candies in the overgrown grass, though I don’t need to know their names to know they don’t belong here, were brought over with people like me then left to grow wild. I like the vetch with its curling tendrils like beautiful miniature stairwells. I notice beautiful differences in all the leaves. But I have no trees.
My neighbour’s husband is almost at the end of their drive. My neighbour is still pointing to the leaves and is now shouting. Her husband shakes his head, turns, and walks back to the house. When he has gone inside, my neighbour takes hold of the tree and shakes it, shakes, shakes, shakes it with all her might, then assumes a calm pose. Her husband returns a minute later, wearing a hat. The hat has ear flaps, thick and fleecy, that remind me of my ex-husband’s dog. My ex-dog. No one who happened upon this scene would believe my neighbour is capable of hating a tree, except me.
My neighbour points to the leaves now all over the drive. Her husband nods and walks on. My neighbour bends, picks up the leaves one by one, walks to the fence separating our properties and drops them on my side. 

​
Picture
​
Rachel J Fenton is a working-class writer from the north of England, now living in Aotearoa New Zealand. She won the University of Plymouth Short Fiction Competition, came second in the Dundee International Book Prize, has been shortlisted for the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was recently nominated for the Best Small Fictions Anthology.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Strands

    Fiction~Poetry~Translations~Reviews~Interviews~Visual Arts

    Archives

    March 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Competitions
    • Strands International Flash Fiction Competition >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Submit
    • Water - Short Story (May 31, 2017) >
      • Results
      • Important Dates
      • Rules
    • Fire - Short Story (Nov 30, 2016) >
      • Results
      • Competition Judge
      • Important Dates
  • Contact
  • Call for Submissions
  • Lit Sphere
    • Novels >
      • Mrs. Saville by Ted Morrissey
      • Shueli's Star by Anna Sujatha Mathai
    • Poetry
    • Visual Art
    • Short Fiction
    • Creative Nonfiction
    • Reviews
    • Interviews