by Tina Barry
After, rivers swirled black, trees pulled from their roots, tipped to the ground. Falling asleep that evening, a mouse walked on my pillow and ruffled my hair. It paused, then scuttled from one side of the bed to another, as if the bed were a ship alive with strange smells. I reached for it. Felt tiny sparks of its fear, its trembling indecision. My daughter crept into our room when she was little. She’d lift the blanket, push her body against my side. I wondered if the mouse had a mother, and if her nest had washed away. Then I thought of all mothers, alert to the night, listening.
Tina Barry is the author of Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower.Her writing appeared in Rattle, Verse Daily, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story)and 2016, Trampset, Connotation Press, Unbroken, Gone Lawn, The Maryland Literary Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal and Flash-Frontier. Tina teaches at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.
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