Splinters in My Mouth by Sabrina Li

Winner of the 2017 Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Award, judged by Siel Ju

Distant father, lonely daughter: It’s an age-old trope, but the author’s emotion comes through. I admired much about this piece —the cold precision of the images, the sanitized moments of connection, the desire to feel, to hurt. -Siel Ju

The only time that her father came close to touching her was during her annual checkup. He pressed his cold stethoscope to her chest. She stared at his fingers. Thin and white and cracked from rubbing sanitizer too many times between his palms. He told her to open her mouth and pressed a wooden stick on her tongue. She watched him watch the back of her throat and wondered if he knew that she had eaten crackers and cheese by herself for lunch. He took a small hammer from his briefcase and tapped her knee with the rubber end twice. She thought about kicking him. Imagined him falling onto her. Wondered if he would be more surprised if she hugged him or shoved him. He began refilling his briefcase, putting each instrument into the bag one at a time. Before he placed the bottle of sanitizer back in, he pressed two dollops between his palms. She watched him rub away the pieces of her that clung to his skin. He closed his briefcase and left the room. She breathed out. She took the tongue compressor her father had left on the table and chewed on the end his fingers had touched until it turned to splinters in her mouth.  

Sabrina Li is a current sophomore at Harvard College. She is the head features editor of The Harvard Advocate and works at PEN America’s Artists At Risk Connection. She’s passionate about fighting for human rights and artistic expression. Her fiction has appeared in The Harvard Advocate, On The Rusk, and The Claremont Review.