Flash Fiction: Lonely Hearts, Her
An immersive audio story 🎧
🎧 Listen to the voiceover with headphones 🎧
She had learned the gesture from a video on guided meditation. The Yogi said placing your hands over your heart was a simple way to ground your mind in the wisdom of your body, especially in moments of high stress. Interacting with strangers was high-stress, but she needed to pay rent and this job at the Cosmic was much better than the restaurant where she had only lasted for one paycheck. The patrons of the tea shop and used bookstore were not loud and full of demands and complaints. They just wanted a quiet place to sit and read.
Since the stroke, her mom was no longer able to work and after a lifetime of taking care of Muriel, it was Muriel’s turn to take care of her mom. That meant going out into the world. To say she was a late bloomer would be false. She was 36 and had never actually bloomed though she had grown deep roots and shoots of green that wound around the trunk of her mother who had both given her shade and shelter but also taken all the light.
Work at The Cosmic aligned with her eccentricities and deep, abiding love for taxonomy and curation. Memorizing the exotic language of tea had consumed her for the first two years. Izum Matcha, Jasmin Dragon Tears, Formosa Pearl Oolong, China Rose Petal, Darjeeling, and Bergamont. That was the man’s favorite. Mr. Felton loved Earl Grey. It wasn’t an exotic tea but it was comfortable. She liked serving comfort to a man who seemed so uncomfortable most of the time in his starched white shirt and one of three ties.
He never tried to talk to her, to chat her up even though he came in every day. In greeting her before ordering his usual, he always asked how she was and his eyes seemed to really want to know before they looked away to rest on the rack of employee picks. Whenever there was one of hers, he would pick it up and study the cramped scrawl of her recommendation on the yellow index card clipped to the front cover. Before he left, he always bought it. It didn’t matter if it was a book on beekeeping or the third book in a sci-fi trilogy.
She wondered if he kept the cards somewhere in his home, maybe on the nightstand by his bed. As she selected a new book each week, she imagined him reading it laying on his bed. She imagined what it might feel like to lay there beside him, in the crook of his arm with her head on his chest as he read and rain pattered against the window outside.
Awwwww. Two private lives entwining. So beautiful Ben.
And this: “She was 36 and had never actually bloomed though she had grown deep roots and shoots of green that wound around the trunk of her mother who had both given her shade and shelter but also taken all the light.”
“She was 36 and had never actually bloomed though she had grown deep roots and shoots of green that wound around the trunk of her mother who had both given her shade and shelter but also taken all the light.” What a gorgeous image. Thanks for this gift of these two. I’m intrigued. 🥰