Month: July 2023

I was our city-island’s 303rd Atlas, I tell my Tinder date on our first outing at a seaside tavern. I expect him to look suitably impressed at me for holding up our whole town, our whole world for a full year. Never once faltering, nor dropping all its citizens to their watery waste.

Do you have a shellfish allergy? he asks as he peruses the salt-laminated menu.

No, I reply. When I held our city up on my shoulders, the seagulls would often deposit little morsels of mussels in my waiting mouth. The guards administered a new saline injection into my veins every night but the birds, oh the birds wanted me to have the first catch of the day, to not subsist on bare sustenance, but savor the salt of the living.

What was your first kiss like? he asks once our food arrives, and I tell him how my former classmates—they in high school, me randomly chosen to hold the groaning city on my growing shoulders—would slip past the guards after class. They would take turns kissing me—free practice for their older crushes—and I could not let go of the world long enough to push them away. Only once did I resist: my bite led to a slap, which caused a minor earthquake across the city’s lower tiers.

Did you ever want to let the city go? he asks next, sky-eyes clouded as they look out to sea. Did you wish to let us fall and sink in the water forever? His mouth twists, an unspoken “after everything, I would” in the furrow of his brow. I don’t reply, instead asking a question of my own.

Did you know I carried you too?

He makes a sound, questioning, like the boy he once was. I tell him I remember the exact frequency of his pulse, and all the times he almost succeeded in snuffing it out. His heart used to be the heaviest of them all.

In the intruding years, I have ceased to intuit the intricate mechanics of my city. I don’t know who the 313^th Atlas is, what they look like, if the seagulls favor them with treats and secrets the way they once favored me. I have long since fulfilled my duty to my cursed city-island. But my arms are still corded with muscles like twisted tree limbs. When I sleep, I don’t dream in words, but in heartbeats.

I reach across the white-clad table and put his scarred hands on my shoulders. Let him feel along adamantine muscles, under a button-down shirt that can never close all the way. His touch slides down until he takes my hand and I let him lead me down to the waterfront, shellfish lunch a long-overdue offering to the seagulls flying watch overhead.

We enter the sea in our first-date clothes, and he lays me out in the cool water. Warm palms under my muscle-roped back, holding me up, up, up until I am one with sea and sky, buoyed by saltwater.

Avra Margariti is a queer author and poet from Greece. Avra’s work haunts publications such as SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).

It was the most ordinary Tuesday in September when the fire hydrant on our street burst open. Some nozzle or cap had simply had enough of doing its job – we could all relate – and water came gushing out. No one had ever paid any mind to the yellow fire hydrant before, and a little water wasn’t going to change that on this particular Tuesday.

By Wednesday however, there was a small current flowing down our gutters. It clearly ran east towards Kensington Court despite previous claims that ours was the flattest street in town, unbiased toward any one direction. We soon began building popsicle stick boats and raced them feverishly. It started innocent enough with little Jimmy Bigelow dropping a twig into the water and racing it on foot. But soon wagers were made, and then came boat spec regulations, qualifying heats, and a Competition Committee was formed.

By Friday, the water filled the entire street as the fire hydrant continued to shoot out a steady stream like projectile vomit. So we threw on our swimsuits and waded waist deep to bring casseroles to the Widow Johnson, or we floated on our backs to go attend Carol’s surprise 40^th birthday party. It was also on this afternoon that the Fire Department arrived. They spent an hour trying to cap the hydrant but were unsuccessful and left, citing something about tax money allocation and limited resources. They were good looking, though, as firemen tend to be, and offered their condolences. “Good luck,” they said with pearly white smiles. “We wish you nothing but the best in this situation.”

By the following Tuesday, the water had reached the top of our front doors. We could no longer tell whose doors were bright red with brass knockers and whose were just tired brown wood. We thought we had them memorized, but turns out it wasn’t as easy as you might think. We exited second story windows and dog paddled to each other’s houses. Borrowed olive oil. Traded for toilet paper. Mr. Callahan showed off his mastery of the breast stroke. Kicking like a frog and gulping air like a fish, but none of us liked him very much, and so we gave him the one-ply.

When the news helicopters arrived and hovered overhead like curious looky-loos, Mr. Jones fired up his 24’ MasterCraft and taught the kids how to waterski. And when Declan Santori brought out his wakeboard and started showing off for the girls – just as he did every football season, three-time state champ – we all hung out of our bedroom windows and chanted, “Jump! the! wake! Jump! the! wake!” We hadn’t felt such community since the last 4^th of July block party when Mrs. McMillan made her famous potato salad and we all chipped in to get the good fireworks. But soon the helicopters scattered like pigeons as there was a school shooting at Crossroads Middle School. Plus it turns out that looking at a street under water isn’t as good for ratings as one might hope. So without the allure of the news copters, the boat was anchored, and we all retreated into our houses and closed the windows as water slowly filled our rooms like in the second hour of Titanic.

Now we sit on rooftops. We dangle our toes in the water and reminisce about backyard barbeques, evening bike rides, and the smell of a freshly mowed yard. Food is getting a little scarce, but we aren’t worried. We used to finger-scroll past headlines about floods in places like Sudan and Indonesia, but our street is nothing like those places. We have smart homes, Ninja blenders, and HBO Max.

Mr. Jones spends most of his time fishing even though we tell him there are no fish on Montgomery Lane, silly. So far he has only snagged a Bon Appetit magazine and the Willoughbys’ cat. We used to still talk to one another, yelling from rooftop to rooftop, but our throats have gone dry and the gossip has run thin. Declan and his buddy Mark Lydell spend their days throwing the football back and forth. They live five houses apart, but man does Declan have a rocket for an arm. The rest of us barely notice the ball whizzing overhead anymore. We haven’t seen Widow Johnson yet. We all knew climbing onto her roof was too much for those old bones, but no one knew who was responsible for her. So no one went. It’s getting harder to keep track of the days, of how many America’s Got Talent episodes we have missed or if Mr. McMillian had his teeth cleaning scheduled for today or tomorrow.

Now we sit on rooftops. We dangle our toes in the water and we wait. Though we’re not sure what for. For someone to come get us? Or for us to go get someone? Or maybe for the water to just go away, go away as quickly as it came. Sometimes we wonder about the nozzle that just stopped working, and whether the fire hydrant was red or yellow, we can’t remember anymore, but then our feet grow numb as the water continues to rise.

Eric Scot Tryon is a writer from San Francisco. His work was recently selected for the Best Microfiction 2023 anthology and has appeared in Glimmer Train, Ninth Letter, Willow Springs, Los Angeles Review, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. Eric is also the Founding Editor of Flash Frog. Find more information at http://www.ericscottryon.com or on Twitter @EricScotTryon.