Amma's Blog

This story was inspired when my daughter had a pet snake, although we actually had to free the mouse and give it another since hungry as she was she woldn’t eat her friend)

SERPENT NATURE
She’d been lonely when it appeared.
At first shy, now when tired, it nestled its small body against her, as she coiled around its warmth.
Daily, she watched her tiny charge explore their shared space. It ate and slept safe in her embrace.
Now, suddenly, her mouth watered.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: flash fiction, mice, short short stories, snakes

TRAP

Voices shouted: “Hands up!” “Drop your guns!” “Drop them!”
Didn’t they realize he couldn’t.
He stood. Waving outstretched arms, desperately trying to signal before their shots whirled and dropped him.
Drawing closer, they saw his taped mouth and the guns
duct-bound to his hands, before they too fell.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: duct tape, flash fiction, gun, quick drama, short story, trap

HAUNTED HOUSE

Her parents claimed it was imagination. Evenings, she’d chill to ghostly fingers on her neck.
Although her family moved away, the ghosts’ breath, tangled smoke signals in her memory.
A half century later, she’d return with her son and discover her childhood… Blue handprints still waiting behind the attic door.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: childhood, ghosts, haunted house

PRINCE CHARMING

“You can’t escape death or taxes.”
By hiding her earnings, she’d escaped taxes. “Now, for death,” she thought sliding her young, dying body into the cryogenic pod.
“Look, Snow White!” a metallic voice said. “When she wakes, she’ll be mine!”
Wondering how long she’d slept, her eyes fluttered open. She met his intent yellow gaze.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: death and taxes, flash fiction, short stories, snow white

MIRIAM’S SONG

Sea walls fold suddenly
over ear splitting silence.
“And Moses led the men in song.”

The last notes sink below our feet
In burnished metallic waters,
impeccable as Egyptian cats.

“Then Miriam the prophetess
took timbrel in her hand and
all the women went out after her in dance
with timbrels. And Miriam chanted for them…”

They say I echoed my brother’s song,
Not true!
I sang my own resonances.
Between words, between singing letters,
I notate ancient silences,
nourishing and elusive as manna.

Sweet milk and honey,
white fire freedom lawless as grass
life pressing through rock walls.

Before the golden calf,
before fear,
before my angry brother’s return
with his stone bride.

I lift up my arms.
Wings above the tide to
sing the first tablets
Holy clear water.

Madeleine Sklar© 2009

Tags: Egypt, Freedom, Miriam, Passover

AARON’S SONG

We need something to sustain us
before the Presence that coils
In the serpentine silence before….

Before the sanctity of
No Thing fills our trembling ears.

We give rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets,
All encompassments,
Creating our perfect “Right answer:”

The infant horns, the shining nostrils,
the hard bright body.
When we embrace you,
You are ours!

Give us back our Egypt.
Protect us from freedom.
Give us Eden without apples,
Protect us from paradox.

Without tempting serpents,
Protect us from choice.
In the earth quaking silence
We call for some
Thing.

Madeleine Sklar© 2009

Tags: aaron, golden calf, Passover poem

HOUSEHOLD SAINT
On her birthday, we lit a candle and placed the cup of coffee near her photograph.
It was one of her last requests: “Do I smell coffee?” and “Where’s Isaac?” before he knelt in front of her at eye level. And she’d said, “I want to go quick.”
…Then, left.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: birthday, celebrating a life, coffee, flash fiction, love, mother in law, short short stories

RAIN

Raindrops echoed the relentless click of her prosecutor’s high heels approaching the stand. “Where were you the night of January, 24 Mrs. Johnston?”
Alone now; even her pillow couldn’t shut out, the accusing drops, striking the tin drainpipe of their house, repeating, the one question she could never truly answer.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: flash fiction, mystery, rain, short stories

HIS SHOES

When he died, the old man’s only-for-church shoes were donated to a thrift shop.
She found them for her son.
In the high school jazz concert, his hot saxophone notes rolled over their slick black toes. Then, they languished in the closet.
His father now wears their barely worn memories.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: flash fiction, shoes, short fiction

THE ODD COUPLE

Seeing her beloved husband asleep, she unzipped the thin seam at her pubis, tucked the shed skin beneath their bed, and flew into the night.
Following breakfast, he kissed her. Then, as always, drove to a solitary spot, unzipped the seam beneath his beard and scampered out into the meadow.

Madeleine Sklar© 2012

Tags: marriage, mouse, owl, relationship