Flash Fiction: One R – Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Regal, region, arid, rest.

I’ve been part of them all. Lover, but never loved. Adored, but never wanted.

Garbage, trash, rubbish.

I’ve never been included in the last, but I could be. I’ve been left alone on a wooden a slat. I’ve been abandoned, in that same place, with wooden colleagues with whom I was, long before, thrown together in resistance, which started with the verb.

Cure, care, assure.

I’ve even been part of more. And more is what I want. As long as I stay here with the characters of my kind, I can only belong to isolated words and maybe the occasional triple letter score. Three times myself is not enough. Or, ore, and ores are not enough. Orange is not enough, and neither is green. I want to make words that make sentences and lines, maybe paragraphs. I don’t dare dream of novels or scripts.

Drift, scatter, scree.

I want to be a letter who belongs to Letters and not just to the word. If that means giving up the board, my peers, and my part in human competition, then at least I can take part in sacrifice as well.