Shards by Tara Isabel Zambrano

Our front door is damaged, and the windows are broken, by a series of storms, so everyone sneaks in- humans, blackbirds, moths, vines. Dad drove away, wrote a prayer hotline number on the kitchen wall. We hide in the closets or in the attic when strangers walk in. They laugh and spray paint the walls, smash the TV, pull the electric cords, cut holes into the couch. The floorboards creak with their weight. 

Once a few men came to the house, dragged our mother out. Our mouths were filled with spit, our throats were dry with anger, by all we could not prevent.

Since then mother lays on an old cot in the attic, staring at the roof damaged by hail. When she gets up, spider webs across her body shine. We massage her scalp, pull out the bugs from her ears. She stares at her belly, says a ruin is growing in it. She bites our arms, her mouth pressed against our skin, her mouth craving faith. Our hair lengthens in the dark, we braid it with mothers to avoid her drifting away in dreams. At night, we hold hands, the floor is a grid of our limbs. When we wake up, we miss being able to see trees, their changing colors from the corner of our eyes. 

In the evenings, we go out in the yard and collect the leftover cans of beers and cigarette buds lying in the tall, dry grass. We wait for dad because it feels wrong not to do so, and disappointed, we chew stale pizza crusts. They settle in our stomach like stones at the base of a fountain. 

Through the holes in the roof, rainwater collects in the only pan we have. The sky bends and drinks all the stars. Once a moon slips in, rolls on the floor. It’s something new to look at, but most of it is dust and rocks. Mother tries to hold it by the edge of her nails, breaks into fits of laughter. Her hands are cut, bruised, by the sharp edges, but she stays on her feet as if the moon is worth chasing until her coarse voice cracks it like glass, shards of light flying everywhere.

Tara Isabel Zambrano is the author of Death, Desire And Other Destinations, a full-length flash collection by OKAY Donkey Press. Her work has won the first prize in The Southampton Review Short Short Fiction Contest 2019, a second prize in Bath Flash Award 2020, been a Finalist in Bat City Review 2018 Short Prose Contest and Mid-American Review Fineline 2018 Contest. Her flash fiction has been published in The Best Small Fictions 2019, The Best Micro Fiction 2019, 2020 Anthology. She lives in Texas and is the Fiction Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal.