A Word From the Cards
Flash fiction
Friday afternoon. It’s cold, flakes of snow are drifting around. Can’t tell if it’s snowing or if the ice is just blowing off the nearby mountaintops. We huddle next to the fire under blankets, the wood smoke scratching our noses and stinging our lungs. And, of course, we play the game.
You draw images, the size of postcards. Dreamlike, sometimes dark, profound, primordial. You may feel what it’s like to be on the point of being engulfed by a ravenous, open-mouthed monster, lost in the desert, tangled in a dripping web of vines. Alone and contemplating the night sky in a field of flowers.
The goal of the game, though, is not to enjoy these tiny postcard illustrations — or to lose yourself in the emotions. The point is to put words to what you see. To turn the experience into language. Distill everything down to one word. In secret, we each scribble a word on a slip of paper — a word that names the illustration, the emotion, the experience. And then, the trick is to guess whose words they are.
The word you choose says something about what’s scribbled on your interior, hidden from view.
After so much time laying on our bellies on the wool carpet, pulling blankets around our shoulders, staring into each other’s eyes, we fatigue.
Then there is the last card. Maybe it shows a tiny person on the edge of an abyss, or a child and a grandfather blowing bubbles into the night sky that become the universe. It doesn’t matter what it is — we just know it when we see it. We have no more emotions, no more words after that.
When that happens, it’s time for tea, which is now just the thyme that is yet to be hidden under snow. Drink this in silence together, huddled together on the couch. Staring into the blowing snow, the blank sky.
Saturday morning, I strike out for work. This time though, the children are home, tucked under blankets. My jeans are tucked into my boots, my jacket is long and downy. But you know how it is.
The cold always winds its fingers under your shirt, or picks at your ankles, caresses the back of your neck. Even as you burrow down into the scarf you knitted just for waiting at frozen bus stops.
With my eyes vague on the empty page that is winter, I almost miss it.
Here, blowing at my feet. Twisting about like a last, disturbed leaf — a postcard.
I lurch into the street to scoop it up. Lucky draw. I gaze into the card — wondering what artist let it fall.
Pencil on paper, all is grey, the blank spaces snow and white and cold. The outside of the house in pencil is grey. Only one thing is golden, warm, and happy. The light in the window.
I know as the word pops into my head that it will define me. It comes too fast. Perhaps it was already here in the frozen, emptiness. The way I miss the warmth. The way I feel on the outside of this home, this image, this window scene. I have my word. But no one is here to guess it.
Thanks for reading,
© 2023 Trisha Traughber
Thank you Thomas Gaudex — for everything.
