3 Microscopic Fictions
by Cami Park
Wilmington
Me, my brothers, the neighbor kids playing outside in our dandelioned yard. The tree house, the mulberries, my older brother teaching us to burp on purpose. Strangers walk by. The neighbor kids start, we join in: go back to Africa, go back where you came from. The words are steel marbles in our mouths.
Bee Dream
What I remember. They were under my hair, which was long, and looped over my shoulder. Nesting. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there, and in my dream I visualized them—plain honey bees, in a dense cluster, humming. I carried a purse with a wide black strap; I moved it, disturbing the bees, and a few dropped from my neck into my purse, making a sound like slow rain. It was then I noticed more bees hidden, nestled, under my sleeve, on my wrist, over the thin scar there.
I woke up wanting not to be alone.
Crazy Soup
You wouldn’t believe the crazy soup coming down out there. Mother butters another piece of toast for her castle. Father slips a tin of cinnamon from his blazer pocket and stretches casually. Oh, yeah. I heard another two inches by nightfall. His hand hovers over a piece of toast on the topmost tower, sprinkling dusky powder. Baby raises the alarm. Soso, Soso, Soso! he howls from the floor, banging a spoon against a Pyrex lid. Daughter edges close to Mother and reaches into a cabinet behind her as Son tackles Father from across the kitchen, grappling for the cinnamon.
There is chaos, and what’s best remembered is not Mother’s tranquil buttering as Father and Son roll on the floor in mortal combat over a household spice, nor Baby’s shrieks as Daughter, one by one, peels pudgy, banana-slick fingers from tight around the spoon. Nor even the table upturned by the father, to prevent the son going after the daughter. Toast everywhere.
It’s the image of her, running. The daughter, running for the front door, then out of it, running, like crazy, bowl in one hand, spoon in the other. Empty rectangles of sky, street, concrete. Grass.
Cami Park does most of her writing at a desk, some of it in bed, but none of it, ever, at the kitchen table. The results can be found in publications such as Smokelong Quarterly, Quick Fiction, Opium Magazine, No Tell Motel, Forklift, Ohio, FRiGG Magazine, Juked, and elimae.