Gap Year

by Belinda Rimmer

Adam dumped Clara at the door of the shack, told her he was going walk-about, something spiritual that didn't include her, and that he'd be back the right side of next week. The right side of next week passed. The garden morphed into dust. Barely a drip from the tap, but she couldn't drink; an erasure of thirst. On one knee, like she did that time as a child when her mother went out in sling-backed shoes with the man across the way and didn't come home for days, she lit a fire. By the time Adam returned, the shack was rubble and smoke, and he looked like he wanted to kill her, at least to maim her, but then he looked afraid.

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Belinda Rimmer is a poet and short story writer. She is a joint winner of the Indigo-First Pamphlet Competition, 2018, with her poetry pamphlet, Touching Sharks in Monaco. Her pamphlet on the life and work of Tillie Olsen, How to be Silent, will be published soon by dancing girl press. One of her flashes made it into bestmicrofiction and the TSS Publishing list for for Best British and Irish Flash Fiction (2019). She is a runner up the 2020 Mslexia flash fiction competition. (For more, visit her website and follow her on Twitter.)