The Interruption
My brush bristles in my palm. My nerves are raw. I have been stroking ink across blank spaces where simplicity and artifice face one another. When I raise my hand above the paper, the world holds its breath.
Mother does not like the chill down here but she holds out a bandage for my finger.
To prevent calluses, she says. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I dip the brush in ink and she locks the trunk I’m using as a table.
The image I had almost captured is severed. The ink scrapes dry. My thoughts are caught in the tumble of spun sugar in my brain. It melts and it sticks. Now Mother can’t move her feet across the floor.
When I hose down her toes she screams, but I swear I never knew she was ticklish.
About the Author
Cheryl Snell’s books include the novels of Bombay Trilogy, and poetry collections from Finishing Line, Pudding House, and Moria Books. Her new series is called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries and includes a volume of flash fiction, a collection of poems, and a novelette. Her work has been included in anthologies such as a Best of the Net and Pure Slush’s Music Folio series. Most recently her words have appeared in the Gone Lawn, Necessary Fiction, Ilanot Review, Cafe Irreal, Roi Faingeant, Literary Yard, New World Writing, and elsewhere. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband.
