"The Neighbor's House was Destroyed, Too"
Kolob Canyon Review Editor's Choice in Fiction 2022
Mom never told me how the neighbor’s house caught fire, just that it did and I wasn’t supposed to go there anymore.
She never told me why I wasn’t allowed to talk to our Uncle Jess alone. She never explained what alcohol smelled like or how to tell if someone was high; Mom only told me to stay away from her brother.
When I went off to study plant biology, we were suddenly tossed into the depths of misunderstanding. My roommate always smelled like gasoline and burnt hair and I didn’t know what that meant so I began to greet the sick scent with the same kindness that I would use to greet her.
I didn’t know what it meant when Uncle Jess pulled me aside at our family reunion that summer, with that now familiar smell on his shirt, and walked me behind the shed to help him figure out if we had weeds growing or if there was mint in our yard. I was a plant student, he insisted, and I should know the difference.
It took two minutes for all of mom’s warnings to make sense.
Laying on the ground, tears in my eyes and my skirt around my waist, I found my attention drifting away from my desecrated body and to the ashy marks on my neighbor’s back fence. They’d fixed the house, but the plastic fence that separated our yards had been stained in the cracks from smoke and ashes.
From my spot on the ground, I envied that house and how completely it had been burned away.
"Violets"
Violet stood at the top of her home overlooking her garden from the embellished second floor window and thought for a long time about the flowers. There was a stolen pistol in her hand. She ignored it.
In spring, the flowers were so bright, so lovely. Their newborn petals were so vibrant, they made new life tangible. The whole garden became a saturated wonderland of new colors unlike any Violet could replicate in her dresses.
And then the summer came and scorched the life out of the new blooms.
And then the summer came and scorched the life out of her son.
Violet couldn’t live, she realized, without colors to see, without saturation. She hadn’t seen color in a long time. The dull disillusionment had to end.
Her hand tightened around the pistol. It was her father’s, a relic from his time in the war, but it still shot well. Violet had practiced.
Violet would not get this wrong.
She made her way down the stairs, brushing her fingertips over the railings for the last time, looking at photos of her family on the wall. Her husband: dead. Her son: dead. Her mother: dead. Her father: gone for work, none the wiser.
She ran her hands atop the flowers, dead petals and leaves falling away as she walked by. It was fall now, and roses didn’t survive in fall. Violets didn’t survive in fall.
The outhouse door creaked as she opened it, and the floorboard protested her every step as she centered herself in the middle of the small space. No one would find her here, she hoped. No one would notice a smell.
She leveled the gun at her face and swallowed the bullet with pride.
Some swear you can still smell flowers in that window. As if it were decorated with violets.