L. Soviero
You and the other kids throw your bets into the kitty on the stoop: a pack of Fruit Stripe, a Lisa Frank eraser, a few temporary tattoos—the coolest one a heart stabbed through its swell by a silver dagger.
You’re betting on your mom. Whether she’ll make it up the street to the apartment building without falling over. All of you laughing, but not just with your voices—with elbows and eyes and backs and bellies—your body parts the bets you throw into the joke.
Your mom staggers. Looks like she might stumble into the brick wall one moment. In the next, leans so far right it seems she’ll keep going clean into traffic. And one day she does—keep going that is—not to the sidewalk as your so-called friends bet, but all the way across three states. Into a little house on the prairie life. In a home with yellow curtains that make it seem as though the sun shines from within. So much that the sunflowers bare their corollas to the house instead of the sky. Her new man has hair made of sunshine too. He speaks in melted butter. Scolds mom in an awwwwww sort of way. Never makes her feel shame like your pop does. This new man even guides the glass to her ready lips and says drink, my darling, drink. And she abides. Every day until her body begins to ferment. Until her organs bubble and fizz and liquify. And soon enough, people drink her. Spill her into their throats with refreshed aaaaaaaahhhhhhhs. Saying she makes you a those-were-the-days sort of drunk. And when you drink her in the afternoon, it’s like you’re in on a secret the sober world will never get.
But right now, she finds her footing in front of the stoop. You’re about to take this kitty. Because though it always seems like she’ll fall, she never does. Not even once.
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L. Soviero is a writer from Queens living in Melbourne, Australia. She has been nominated for Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Wigleaf Top 50. Her work has been included in Best Small Fictions (2021 and 2024) and Best Microfiction (2024). Her chapbook Wandering Womb made the Masters Review 2023 Chapbook Open shortlist. Check out more from her at lsoviero.com.