Micro Memoirs in DIAGRAM
On the first day of the new year, DIAGRAM published three of my micro memoirs.
They’re about murder as a protective force, the significant sound of lines slapping against masts, and childhood shame.
A Quote from Two Midnight Murders
My husband in Vietnam kills roaches. Naked, he hunts in the bathroom, rubber flipflop raised like a weapon in his hand. Each time he squashes a roach on the sink, the critter explodes in a disgusting gooey mess that I seem to taste in the back of my throat. I’m forty-three. The air sticks to my face like a rag.
A Quote from Harbor Lines
Not as steady as a clock, not as warm as a heart, not as resonant as a drum, but known like a melody and present like the wind is the sound of lines slapping against the masts of pleasure boats docked in the harbor, a sound signifying safety, at least to me, for it lulled me to sleep each night after a day of sailing or bobbing on the Dutch waters during the long summers I spent on my father’s yacht…
A Quote from Six Times Red Before the Age of Ten
The girl my schoolmates and I call Thundercloud circles around me on her roller skates, demanding my attention. She grabs me, again and again, as though I’m her speed-breaking wall. She always seems moody and this time her moodiness spreads: I shake her off, maybe push her a little. She glides backwards and falls on the stone playground. Our eyes lock. Instead of angry, she looks hurt, and I feel her pain as if it’s mine.
Please visit DIAGRAM to read these three micro memoirs in full.
Other authors might be interested to know that being persistent can pay off. I submitted my first flash fiction to DIAGRAM in 2015. It got rejected. I’ve sent them ten other pieces since. They were either rejected or withdrawn by me (and published elsewhere). But this year the editors and I agreed that DIAGRAM was the perfect home for these essays.
I thank the editors for publishing my work and thank you all for reading!
Interested in reading more memoir? Please see my short prose page for links of my work published online.
The photo is of one of the many creatures in Vietnam my husband didn’t kill.
