Broken

Elegant prose, with a great sting at the end!

Thanks, Elaine! Nice to see you here.

This is so sad and utterly gorgeous.

I think it's hard to write such a big story in such a small space and have it feel right. To me this one does. I appreciate it more w/ each read.

Thank you, Meg and Scott!

Katrina - I read this a few days ago and have been thinking about it since. Thanks for sharing it.

Thank you for commenting, Amanda.

I relly like their contradicting understanding of the basis of their relationships and of physical traits, and how you sum it in the last part.

Thanks, Av!

I love this.

Thank you, Kate!

This is a good one. Love your ability to emphasize broken-ness throughout, from the umbrella, to the hand, to the relationship, to the narrator. And how the humanity of being broken is a perfection in itself, perhaps.

Cheryl

Thanks so much, Cheryl.

I'm a big fan of the short short (nonfiction in particular). Not sure if this if fiction or nonfiction, but it is lovely writing either way.

Thanks, Amy!

Lovely.

Thank you, Charles.

This is lovely, Kat.

Thanks, Kim!

there are some oppositions set up very nicely here that make this story satisfyingly whole along with the right touch of details to make it understandable without weighing it down

Thanks so much, Morgan!

Oh, Kat, there's so much being said in the not-saying here. Every word and image of every sentence is giving things up. I want to have written this sentence: The rain fell softly at the edges of our backs. Not her back, but their backs. She's considerate of him from beginning to end.

Beautiful -- so rarely do short-shorts tell a whole story, or really capture entire emotions like what you are able to do here in so few words.

Small notes: For the purpose of mystery, and for the sake of sparse language, I would advocate leaving out the aside about *why* his fingers are missing. It only matters to the reader *that* they are missing.

Also, and this is a tiny tiny one, but if you removed the simile from the "geometry lesson" line, I think it would bear more weight. It's not "like" a lesson, it *is* one. "The lines etched on it were a geometry lesson."

One last note, on the order of ideas: especially with how well you've set it up in threes, it might increase the impact of the fifth sentence if ordered thus: "The next time he came home from work -- the smell of the rubber plant burned into his pores, not yet scrubbed away -- I would not be here." (Some say that that's burying the lead. I think of it as bump-set-spike.)

All in all, a really great piece. Looking forward to reading the rest of yours.

Thanks for your comments, Pia and Chris!

This is just gorgeous, Kat. One of my favorites of yours. That last line and all of this. Whooosh.

Thanks, Kath.

The first two sentences give me chills every time I re-read this. And it only gets deeper and more complex from there! Lovely! And heartbreaking. Beautiful.

Thanks so much, Molly!

I have a relative with missing fingers and I don't think he would blame a breakup on that. Is this story perhaps best read as a wish fantasy, and in reality the narrator doesn't actually run away?

Jonathan,

I have a dear elderly friend who was self conscious of the missing fingers of her hand, still after so many years. She liked to tell me it was the reason for her divorce. But yes, you're right, the missing fingers were never the real issue.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

This is a wonderful piece. "My lips pressed what I couldn't say into his hand, invisible ink" is a devastating sentence. A great read - and in such a compact form.

Thank you so much, Sam.

Wonderful!! (As always.)

Thank you, Mary!

Katrina, this is a lovely piece. I so appreciate the "smell of the rubber plant burned into his pores", and the perfect last line. Thoughtful and spare. Thank you.

Thanks for reading and commenting, Traci.