Micro fiction, Elizabeth Rosen
Endeavor
He looked away sadly, picking at the seam of his hospital gown. “I thought it was something I might be good at.”
I knew what he meant. I had a memory of holding his hand as a boy while our daddy told us we’d always be failures.
That was the time after I’d been benched for the season, but between us later there would be hunting trips with no blooding, carpentry that resulted in wonky structures, creative writing classes that yielded no poetry, auto-tech training foiled by an aversion to dirty hands, marriages foiled by an inability to share.
I’d remember those things my brother tried later, after he jumped.
Elizabeth Rosen (she/her) is a native New Orleanian and a transplant to small-town Pennsylvania. She misses gulf oysters and Southern ghost stories, but has become appreciative of snow and colorful scarves. Colorwise, she’s an autumn. She still wants her MTV. Her stories have appeared in places such as North American Review, Baltimore Review, Pithead Chapel, Flash Frog, and New Flash Fiction Review. Learn more at www.thewritelifeliz.com.
