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Postcard Fiction

I’ve heard of flash fiction and very short shorts. But today I learned that flash fiction can be broken down into a whole other slew of sub-genres and tiny word counts.

  • A drabble: 100 words
  • Nanofiction: 55 words (these are complete stories, people)
  • And, my favorite…Hint fiction: 25 words (if you think you’re up to this type of challenge, here’s a contest)

On SheWrites.com, several women writers have formed a group: Flash and Micro/Fiction & Nonfiction. Each week there is a theme, and contributors post their best very, very short stories. You have to be a SheWrites member to participate, but SheWrites is a great resource for and community of women writers.

This week’s theme: Postcard fiction, 250 words or less. What can you write in 250 words?

In 246 words, here’s my story (and I’m sticking to it):

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She didn’t look so old three days ago.

I stopped by her apartment after work for our usual Wednesday evening coffee date. She just got back from her mall walking and said she had gotten an eye-full at the Victoria’s Secret display.

“I don’t think their hardware could hold together much of my old body.” She laughed hard. “I’d be a nightmare in satin!”

She talked, while she buzzed around the kitchen. She washed out a juice glass and her favorite coffee cup. She grabbed a cup for me and turned on “the tea kettle.” She dropped a few teaspoons of Foldgers in our cups, then topped the grinds with sugar.

“I put a little extra sugar in yours, honey. I know you like it sweet. That water’ll be hot any minute now.”

She was vibrant as she danced in and out of the late afternoon sunlight that streamed through her patio doors.

But now, laying there in the hospital bed, she looked old. Her hair had gone white. It was gray before, but now it was definitely white. And the skin on her arms seemed looser. Maybe it was always that way, and I just never noticed.

I pulled back the sheet and found her hand. Ice cold. I lifted it to my cheek to try and warm her fingers. She breathed deep.

“Is that you, honey? Is it Wednesday already?”

She turned to me. I smiled and tried to hide the fear in my eyes.

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The new debate.

I live in a northern state, where summer only lasts a month or two. Where I feel like a lizard come march, scurrying from sunbeam to sunbeam while the air is still cold. And, I mourn at the first site of falling leaves in early August.

I’ve heard living here puts me at high risk for vitamin D deficiency. We simply don’t get enough sun, they say. Or maybe it’s that we don’t get outside enough. Could be my high-carb diet doesn’t leave space enough for vitamin D to take root.

Whatever the reason, this article brings the vitamin D deficiency debate to the forefront. And, like the egg debate, no one can quite decide if it’s good or bad, if statistics are true or false, or whether or not we should run to the nearest Vitamin Shoppe.

I’m a pessimist when it comes to health and statistics or research on what I should eat or avoid. I live in the city. I’m not a self-sufficient farmer growing all my own in organic soil, raising free-range chickens or grass-fed cattle. I assume I’m ingesting all sorts of carcinogens that filter out all the good stuff.

I never know what to do when the current “breaking news” hits my screen. I read it, but unless I win the lottery soon or come into a large plot of land and the equipment to work it, I’m stuck. Stuck shopping at the large chain grocery stores that buy corporate farm products and factory processed meats and sell them at a discount that I can’t afford to ignore.

Sure, I can run out and buy a load of vitamin D. I hear it’s cheap right now. Maybe I should run out and buy in bulk, before the pharmeceutical companies hone in on the critical levels of deficiency. But, as soon as I get home and unpack my boxes of D, I’ll open my laptop and read another article about another study that suggests everyone got a little too excited the first time around.

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Put pen to paper, please.

I recently browsed onto this article at Time online by Claire Suddath about the dying art of handwriting. Claire Suddath writes that the take over of technology has caused schools to decrease the amount of good quality time teaching penmanship.

Learn to read, learn to keyboard, but don’t worry about learning to write a long letter. If you want to contact your Senator, just send an email. You don’t even need to master your own signature. Petitions are all online these days, too, and checks — archaic.

Still, with all the artists and writers in the world, handwriting must exist. Part of my writer-esque includes a life-long search for the perfect journal and the perfect pen. If I’m going to write out my worst insanity, I want it to look good on paper. And, I spend a significant amount of time analyzing calendars and mechanical pencils at the start of a new year, debating over the authority in a 0.7mm versus a 0.5mm pencil. I stare for hours at an aisle of sharpies in every color of the rainbow.

Writers and artists aren’t alone in their craft of handwriting. I can recognize an architect in a second from numbers and letters alone. My son received a birthday party invitation in the mail a few weeks ago. I expected childlike writing. But, when I opened it, I thought parent and architect. The numbers were drawn in one fluid movement and the “what, when and where” was spelled out in squared and angled capital letters. My hunch was confirmed when my son brought home his light saber party favor, made from a swim noodle, an exacto knife, and various colors of duct tape.

Even Claire Suddath acknowledges that handwriting is critical in certain professions. She mentions the thousands of deaths that occur because of doctors’ illegible writing on charts and scripts. I’m drawn to the fact that all doctors sign the same. No matter their name, the signature starts with a few rises and falls, then flatlines. Do they teach that in medical school?

“Handwriting” and “defunct” must never be in the same sentence. I pledge to write a “thinking of you” note to someone at least once a month. Maybe once a week. Because next thing you know, I’ll stumble onto an article about the demise of the US Postal Service.

I mean, I like evite invitations and e-cards. They’re cute. They keep the graphic artists in business. But, I look forward to the slam of the mail slot around 11am every day. My heart jumps when I see a small envelope, addressed to me, in my best friend’s or my dad’s handwriting. A little pen to paper can make my whole day.