Every Thirty Seconds
A Flash Fiction by Shelley Kirton
First Place Winner 2024 WestWord Flash Prize
Gravity always wins. This Astra tells her grandchildren as they tip their chairs back on two legs at the dinner table, lean over the balcony, or climb up the forbidden railings. Gravity always wins. You cannot fly. You will fall. It will hurt. They laugh. How dreary she is, they think. But they have no understanding of consequences: that knowledge comes with age, disappointment, and the loss of dreams.
Far out to sea, the light signal flashes from a white metal tower at an elevation of one hundred and eleven metres and with a range of seven sea miles. The precision of numbers beguiles Astra.
But Astra also likes life to have the possibility of adjustment, allowances, and accommodations. For example, the wiry mouth of the toaster would ideally have capacity available should she decide on something other than a petite slice of pedestrian wholegrain. She’s made thin, gravelly toast for their breakfast for so many years. She would now prefer a plump, sesame-seed-sprinkled and softly crisped bagel encircled with soft butter. She would enjoy the salty dribbles and nutty full-stops and lick her fingers, savouring the freedom of the moment.
Jagged islands are scattered before her, between her and the light that marks safe passage around its rocky home. Flashes as a destination marker. Flashes to warn of danger. Of dreams about to be shattered. Every thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds: a blink of an eye of the time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun; 365 days, gravity holding her in place in the vast untethered unknown as she lives unaware of the Earth’s spinning on its axis on its 66,660 miles per hour dash through space.
Gravity holds the planets and stars and light and galaxies under its command. It had kept Astra’s feet on the ground, realistic and practical. She keeps her head calm and sensible. Pragmatic. Gravitas: that Roman virtue of seriousness. Latin of weight. No wonder Astra despairs at times that her life has become so ponderous, all that solemnity, all that gravity. Too much heaviness. Not enough fun. Nor laughter. No recklessness: just-because-she-can’t.
Astra sees the regular flashes from her bed, propped on pillows and with her book slumping. The regularity across the serrated islands and the still, voiceless water is reassuring for those in peril on the sea. A warning. Passing ships.
Ships that pass in the night. Each of them had sailed in a different direction. She is now on dry land. There was no light of warning, no regularity of flashing caution as they ran aground. He wrapped concealed anger in duplicitous smiles and gaslit her as she mistook the intent behind his grinning teeth. She should have known better. She held out for love where there was none. Foolish Astra.
Time is like gravity, pulling and anchoring her. Twin forces bearing down on her life, holding it in place and limiting its wonder. Space-time. A continuum of time spent together yet apart. Time is pressed down by seconds of missed opportunities in the vacuum of their life. A life that no longer holds the promise of dreams, just the realities of a nightmare.
Astra feels as though she is orbiting her life. Knowing she is on a trajectory to the unknown ahead. She dreams the magic of being weightless in space, effortlessly floating. In free fall. No up. Nor down. With no assigned placement for her feet or head. She would spin and circle sideways, up, down, and around. Behold the blue pearl of the watery Earth illuminated by sun and moon. She would twirl and dance, angel hair and celestial skirts flying, pirouetting in space. Defying propriety along with gravity, free of raised eyebrows and opprobrium.
She wishes she could know the starry fantasia up close and no longer a million miles away. Luminous balls of hydrogen and helium bound by their own gravity. The sun a fiery star. Moonlight, a sonata of borrowed light, reflected sunlight.
The moon, a satellite orbiting the Earth in the luminosity of another and igniting the darkness of her nights with the brightened taunts and poison-tipped flaming arrows of broken dreams.
She remembers when she was a beach-baby ballerina in a lather of pink frills on sparky white sand. Watching the ripples as they curled towards her innocent toes. Fantasies and desires and the candlelight of yearnings brightening the way ahead.
She imagines the waves that sprawl to shore. Gravity links but does not confine them. They are free to gossip with the sand and whisper the words of endearment she has not heard for so long.
Astra no longer needs a flashing light to warn her of her vulnerability; she knows it well enough. But nonetheless, the darkness surrounding her is sparked by the faraway burst of warning.
Astra sees her crouching wheelchair gleam with her broken dreams.
Every thirty seconds.
Author: Shelley lives between the far north of the North Island of New Zealand, and Australia, where her children now live. She has enjoyed some publishing success since she has been able to write fulltime. She loves the challenge of creative writing and the worlds that open to her.