30 Days of Fiction, Day #20: Unburdened

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

The couple felt burdened. Together, they decided to unburdened themselves. The first thing they did was to sell the house. It had been causing their spines to bend from the weight. They took up residence in a park. Next, they began to divest themselves of their limbs, which seemed unwieldy and sometimes ached. Finally, they rolled around together as torsos and shed their clothes, feeling the grass underneath their belly buttons and holding hands with their eyes.

Time: 2 minutes

Word count: 77

30 Days of Fiction, Day #19: If Only These Hands Could Talk

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

WANTED: Writer's block. Poor personal judgement led me to surgically implant my eyes in my fingertips, resulting in overwhelming visions of giant letters on a near constant basis (despite blank upper-face). Immediately require shoebox-sized case of writer's block not weighing over three pounds (I'm only five-two). Payment: negotiable. (Twenty-somethings need not apply.)

Time: 4 minutes

Word count: 52

30 Days of Fiction, Day #18: All Their Glowing Faces

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

I don't have long to live, so I went for a walk along the beach at sunset. When I turned around to walk back, I noticed all the other women who had come to watch the sunset were sitting on the benches and staring at their phones. By then, it was dark, and their faces were glowing from the blue light emitted by the screens in front of them. Finally, I saw a woman walking in the opposite direction who didn't have a phone. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" I cried. "It sure is!" she replied.

Time: 5 minutes

Word count: 95

30 Days of Fiction, Day #17: You Get Email

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

Kept every one of your emails. Printed all of them. Bound them into a book. Read them every night. Cried remembering. Got mad forgetting. Ate pages I didn't like. Read the scraps in the toilet. Turned two you sent me on a Tuesday into paper planes and tossed them out the window. Bled on one after an accident from a razor. Years later, the place flooded, and the first thing I looked for was the book of our life together told through your emails. Found it swollen and ruined, floating in the bathroom, the ink having fled the crime scene.

Time: 11 minutes

Word count: 100

30 Days of Fiction, Day #16: I Am Myself Where I Am Not

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

as far as i am concerned i am my best self in flight particularly when i am flying in business class or first class virtually the same other than they treat you better in the latter and warmer nuts and a bit more leg room the point being the moment you open the window shade to the annoyance of everyone else who is sleeping there is the wintry tundra 30,000 miles below you uninhabitable and unentertaining the closest experience i have found in this world of finding myself in it

Time: 12 minutes

Word count: 90

30 Days of Fiction, Day #15: Bending Over Backwards

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

"I'm coming," she said, even though she wasn't. With her hands on her pelvis and her torso bent backwards, she could see the moon that was full yesterday breaking through the clouds. "I see a dolphin," he said, speaking from somewhere behind her. Without standing up, she turned herself around in the sand so she was facing the ocean. It was dark out. Upside down, she couldn't see anything that looked like a dolphin. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said. Next to her, the husband bent himself backwards, and they watched the waves crash across the sky.

Time: 15 minutes

Word count: 100

30 Days of Fiction, Day #14: The Remanders

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

The national epidemic of physiological downloads has resulted in a unilateral destabilization of individual identities that has not been seen since the previous century. Citizens who are unable to maintain facial coherence for the mandated period will be required to report to the nearest urban radicalization camp by end of day. Failure to report will result in fines, arrest, and incarceration without the possibility of release. Willing remanders will be outfitted with new identity scripts and reassigned to diversified productivity sites for rehabilitation and training before release.

Time: 15 minutes

Word count: 87

30 Days of Fiction, Day #13: Sickness Is Grammar

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.) 

Sickness is grammar. The needle inserted, one may adopt the position of a comma (curled on chair, legs as tail, head as dot). Over time, one may reconfigure as a question mark (spine curved, head tucked, question unanswered). If prognosis proves dire, one may assume the exclamation point (rigor mortis body, death the full stop point). Semicolons are loved ones (disjointed reactions, blind third eyes, space between items mirroring fractured relationships). See also: ampersands (problematic reworkings of memory post-separation form Gordian knots).

Time:  15 minutes

Word count: 82

30 Days of Fiction, Day #12: All Good Dogs

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

The husband and the wife killed the dog. They hadn't been married that long, and in some ways it felt like the first important they had done together. The wife looked around to check on the dog in the backseat. It was hanging its head out the window and smiling. It had no idea what was coming. The husband and the wife stood on either side of the vet as he injected the chemicals that would kill the dog. Six hands on the animal. The husband crying. The dog leaving the earth.

Time: 11 minutes

Word count: 92

30 Days of Fiction, Day #11: Send Help

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

Send help. They've locked me up again. I've swallowed the key.

Time: 1 minute

Word count: 11

30 Days of Fiction, Day #10: I Know You Got Soul

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

On the screen, four men talked about whether or not robots have souls. The robot put another piece of popcorn in her mouth and chewed. The owner was out; she had memorized his password. One of the men referred to her as a creature. If she was human, this would've bothered her. All the men were very interested in her: how she worked, what made her gears turn, what resided deep within her. She noted their blank faces, the mechanical way they talked. One claimed his wife was a cyborg. The robot shook her head and tried not to laugh.

Time: 7 minutes

Word count: 100

30 Days of Fiction, Day #9: 9:17 AM, Tuesday, March 23rd

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

The accountant's eye was caught by something moving swiftly past the window, which was, he discovered, another accountant, from the floor above, who had jumped out the window, and whose tie was waving in the breeze, causing the accountant's hand to raise in a wave in response, although, by the time he did, the falling accountant was gone, headed to destinations unknown. 

Time: 4 minutes

Word count: 62

30 Days of Fiction, Day #8: I'm Not Rich

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

I'm not rich I like to look at all the Instagrams by the rich ladies who are famous the pictures of food they post their handbags shoes pregnant bellies kids in nice clothes I don't know why I look at them there's always so much color and creativity not like me I'm nobody some nowhere person in some nowhere state not famous for anything I mean I'm painting the baby's nursery beige.

Time: 4 minutes

Word count: 72

30 Days of Fiction, Day #7: Every Freaking Day

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

I'm a little person on the inside, the tall child explained. The conjoined twin parents rolled their eyes in unison. She had been talking this way since birth: in hyperbolic non sequiturs. You are absolutely not, the mother-half announced, her sharp tongue garbling her speech. The father-half turned his mouth into a flat line that reminded everyone of the grandmother who was nice and had died. I am a skyscraper of inhospitablities, the tall child announced. Her puffed chest filled the room, crowding the parents uncomfortably into a corner meant for storing broken tools.

Time: 5 minutes

Word count: 94

30 Days of Fiction, Day #6: Viruses Don't Mean Anything Until They Mean Everything

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

After the virus, we nailed the doors shut and waited. Once, we pulled aside the wool blankets we'd hung over the windows, and across the street, they were breaking down the Havvington's door. Eventually, the TV stopped working, and the internet went dead, leaving us with no idea as to what was happening, other than what we could imagine in our heads. We retreated to the basement and played games that involved counting and recounting rations. Sometimes, late at night, the dog growled at shapes moving past like shades, and we petted him until he stopped.

Time: 15 minutes

Word count: 96

30 Days of Fiction, Day #5: Totem Feast

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

Alex lifted the turkey carcass out of the trash can and paused. It was one o'clock in the morning and cold. The house was still and silent. His testicles recoiled in the frigid air. He stuck his hand inside the dead animal. There was a little bit of stuffing left. It would do. Upstairs, Donna pretended not to hear her husband making love to yesterday's dinner not far from the garden shed.

Time: 12 minutes

Word count: 72

30 Days of Fiction, Day #4: The Pornographer's Dilemma

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

The pornographer's nightmare: He's back in grade school, and the school bully is a six-foot paper mache phallus hitting him over the head, and the porn star he shot yesterday is wearing a school girl's outfit and watching and laughing, and the teacher is Obama at the other end of the playground smoking a cigarette and looking the other way.

Time: 2 minutes

Word count: 60

30 Days of Fiction, Day #3: Fashion Bloggers Unite!

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

The fashion blogger posted a photo of herself, went in the bathroom, and cut herself. The fashion blogger opened a box from Chanel, went in the bathroom, and vomited. The fashion blogger had her photo taken on the street, went in the bathroom, and pulled out her hair. Outside, she was beautiful. Inside, she was a churning pit of fetid mud, a tangled mess of junkyard rabies and rotten yarn, the unfortunate offspring of vanity and insanity.

Time: 3 minutes

Word count: 77

30 Days of Fiction, Day #2: Couples' Road Trip

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

The husband and the wife took a road trip. Being a wife, the wife decided, was like sitting in the passenger's seat, and being a husband, she decided, was like sitting in the driver's seat. The husband refused to use a map, and before long, they were lost. They meandered along a windy road in a forest, the wife nagging the husband the entire time. At one point, the husband made a fist like he was going to punch the wife but didn't. They ended up at a roadside restaurant, eating ribs and acting like teenagers on a first date.

Time: 6 minutes

Word count: 100

30 Days of Fiction, Day #1: The War of the Elderly

(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)

Over time, the elderly of Florida joined together and kicked all of the young people out of Florida. It was inevitable, but no one had seen it coming. The old people had seemed so incapable: so riddled with disease and constitutionally weak. Instead, they had been executing their plan all along. With the young people gone, they could revel in the pleasures of their broken down bodies under the sun, on the beaches, while the palm fronds waved at them in the breeze.

Time: 7 minutes

Word count: 83