Category: Flash

An archive of all of the flash creative nonfiction / flash CNF we’ve published over the years. Our flash category is specifically for pieces up to 800 words.

Only movement soothes me still. Swimming laps at the city pool I am in my mother’s womb—in liquid, in liquid, in liquid, in motion.

Of course, he would have called them “caps,” but what he kept on the rack in the hallway were, to me, always “hats.”

She is beautiful—like, princess-of-some-obscure-country beautiful or my-dad-is-a-B-list-celebrity-and-my-mom’s-a-performance-artist beautiful.

Houses, trees, telephone poles blur. I close my eyes, but they open. To see how I’m going to die.

… I step outside and meet a squirrel standing between my car’s back tire and the curb.

Today, like hundreds of yesterdays, he prepares for work, clipping closed his knife bag after donning standard culinary regalia.

My father, dying, held out two days to say goodbye to Tommy and Karolyn Burkett, returning as quickly as they could from England.

It’s raining when we exit Saks on 49th and Fifth, so I pull umbrellas from my tote. The walk sign blinks, and I move quickly. He blocks my way.

The color of mourning is white. Not knowing you were going to a funeral, your violet Punjabi dress will have to do.

She knows I love the Amish—in the way one loves all things experienced theoretically and from the perspective of novelty: with casual abandon.

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