Flash fiction is short, sharp, and memorable. They are stories allowed only to be a few hundred words. Below are three flash fiction pieces written by Sacred Heart students who have used their passion for writing to craft memorable works exploring internal struggles. Audrey’s Corner prides itself upon being a home for writers and readers to find hope. “The Corner Shelves,” “A Paper Promise,” and “My Unfinished Symphony” convey this message.
The Corner Shelves
By: Haley Alvarado
Stained more than a smoker’s teeth lay books older than you or me. Compromised spines broken from love now are embarrassed by pieces of tape as they slowly break. Their tears contribute to the story they have to tell. Those are the books hidden on the corner shelves of the library. Not all of them are beaten or old, but those ones hold a sanctioned personality guaranteed. Leaving you undressed to find something that provokes tenderness. Till you’re left to disentangle the words to fill the spiraling void of want. To understand a page and the reverence that it made.
A Paper Promise
By: Kailey Blount
The stairwell told me a secret.
In all the years I’d made a home of his landing, he never once spoke a word. Wooden and wild, my blankets made a roof of his railing. A bed of his floors.
I never questioned our wordless ways. My company came in the form of spaces on a written page. Paper cuts and paper people. For memories and friends. I made them all on a stairwell who would never hear their ends.
Except, he did. He knew my stories. He knew my name. And he knew why I slept on his hollow steps, a tattered pillow under a nest of knots too busy to upset. My imaginings stayed awake, waiting for the familiar creak who’d tuck them in drawers and rock them to sleep.
I always assumed it would be the creak who’d forget. He’d stay silent one night, too worn out to warn me of distant dreams. He’d never return to pick up my seams.
I never thought it would be me. Who’d keep the tattered pillow on a mattress, letting cobwebs fill the corners of where blankets used to sleep. Who’d keep the stories tucked in drawers, letting the paper people blow dust on the pages where I used to write words. Who’d yank a comb through the wild knots, letting the girl who I was drift into a woman who had forgot.
Now, with my soul stuck in the spaces of these paper pages, I remember the secret the stairwell told me all those years ago.
I creak on purpose to let you know you aren’t alone.
When my blanket left his corners, he shivered every night. His splinters missed my stories. My paper people. My wild knots. The way my toes felt on the banister when my mother would yell at me to stop.
And now, I can recall, a distant creak who never forgot the friend who’d filled his hollow heart with paper promises to never grow up.
My Unfinished Symphony
By: Jillian Reis
There is a Symphony in my head.
It’s loud and terrible and soft and beautiful. Sometimes it’s in a major chord, sometimes minor. For a long time, I thought it was ADHD or anxiety or something wrong with me. This unending melody fills my brain so relentlessly it must mean something is wrong with me.
One day I picked up an instrument and played part of the melody. People clapped and cheered, but it was only one instrument. It was only one part of the symphony. I tried to play it all at once, but it never works. I am one person, not an orchestra so only I can hear its tune.
Even if I played the symphony for all to hear, would they like it? Would they call me insane? Would they see it as a joke? Would it fall on deaf ears?
In the end, I am one person. I can’t play all the instruments at once and the melody is relentless.
My Unfinished Symphony, Forever Unfinished.
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