Reminders

by Ruth Callaghan do Valle

"It's 9:20, Dad. Time for your walk," she'd say. She always stayed behind in the house, carefully removing the last few memories he had fought so hard to retain. The morning she disappeared, the house finally spotless, it all changed. With no one left to remind him, he sets out earlier, just in time to pull a brown envelope from the bin at the end of the garden before the lorry passes. Hundreds of images spill out and he walks slowly back to the house with a young woman holding a baby girl, turning them over and over in his hands.

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Ruth Callaghan do Valle lives in rural Brazil with her husband and three-year-old. Her poetry has been published in TunaFish Journal, streetcake magazine, The Minison Project, Lost Pen Magazine, Off Menu Press and Re-side Zine. You can find her on Twitter and on her blog.