Two Flash Essays by Sarah Leamy

Eight Years Later to the Day

Ice. Blue. Dark sky. Well below zero. A blizzard across the staircase. The wooden steps were old and worn slippery. Red PJs blue snow boots and dad’s red dressing gown thick and warm. The dogs ran down, Harold had a case of the runs, woke me up at four in a snowstorm raging outside. I followed the two dogs down the stairs through snowdrifts but my boots slipped out from under me and I smashed onto my back and slid down crunch thump yell fuck shit shit. My arm grabbed the rail, one on the left, and yanked me to a stop halfway down in the snow in the freezing black ice snowdrifts on worn-out stairs outside my home in town and the neighbors were out and lights off and I grabbed the rail and stood up shaky lonely. My back and arms were bruised and muscles torn but not dislocated like years before and oh shit don’t think about it. Struggling back upstairs, I let us all in and lay on my back feeling bruised scared and my heart hurts and burst into tears. Eight years ago to the night, my mum fell down a flight of stairs. At her home. I’m alive. Bruised. Breathing. She’s not.

The shower didn’t help.

The stink lingered. The pain stuck around. The bathtub overflowed. The hot water ran out. The mirror fogged up. The toothpaste had dried up. The jeans and tee-shirt got soaked. The dogs begged. The clock ticked. You left. The sandwiches forgotten. Walking outside was hot. The headache didn’t help. The aspirin didn’t help. Not enough. The monsoons didn’t help either and quite frankly, you were cranky. The hangover didn’t help. It was a long morning but lunch at the pub helped. The first beer helped. The quiet helped. The walk back to work was pleasant. The frog in the puddle croaked. The nod hello from the old lady and her poodle helped. The day ended. The dogs were waiting. The sandwiches untouched. The beer was cold. The phone was silent. The dinner was cooked. The dogs walked. The cat fed. The clock said nine. You said, bedtime. Stevie sulked. Harold nestled on the bed beside you. Your other dog wagged her tail, knocked over the phone, and you smiled, finally, saying, ah Rosie, thank you, you’re right, I don’t need to hear from anyone now.

Sarah Leamy is the author of When, Lucky Shot, Lucky Find and Van Life. Other work is in Hunger Mountain, Santa Fe Project Quarterly, Devil’s Party Press, Dune Review, and Best Emerging Poets of NM. ‘Eight Years’ comes from Stay, a new hybrid memoir, that Lidia Yuknavitch calls ‘stunning’.