The app for independent voices
It seemed so easy.
Just put my older published fiction up on Substack…
Of course I had to rework the entire story. Here’s a bit:
“…No one else knew that Mrs. Murphy lived inside her house as though it were a portal, the one place it might be possible for her son to enter back into her world. There was no need to tell anyone. But how would he remember if it had been beaten out of him? How would she recognize him if he came to the door?
Sometimes she polished things so hard, the dark walnut of the dining room table for instance, that she might have been genie rubbing a lamp, asking for her wishes back. To be taken back to a place when she hadn’t used them up on silly things - that his team win the baseball game, that he be the first swimmer to touch the cement edge of the pool, that his first love, small, dark Sheila, might accept his invitation to the prom. All these wishes had been granted, used up before she knew she might need the power of all of them combined…”
Excerpt from The Flag, 2012
Shital Morjaria (she/her) gave me permission to use her photo to help tell this story.
