Spectacles

by Robert Scotellaro

There they were, his reading glasses at the bottom of the clear toilet bowl water neatly folded. There was something sad and tragic about the sight of them, something bigger drowned. She had been hounding him again the night before about having a baby as he was reading in bed and he just waved her off, turning the page and telling her it wasn’t the right time. He could hear some clock (some Big Ben) gonging in her, rattling the bed board and making the lamp shade tilt. He put his hand down into the shallow water and retrieved them, brought them to the sink to rinse. Put them on streaked and dripping, and allowed himself to see the world that way.

6S

Robert Scotellaro is the author of 7 flash fiction collections including most recently: Ways to Read the World (2022) and God in a Can (2022). He has, along with James Thomas, co-edited New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, published by W.W. Norton. His work has appeared widely, nationally and internationally, and included in the W. W. Norton anthologies, Flash Fiction International and Flash Fiction America, and in 4 Best Small Fictions and 2 Best Microfiction award anthologies. He is the winner of Zone 3’s Rainmaker Prize in Poetry and the Blue Light Book Award for his fiction. Find him online here.