Invisible Quartet

by Tiffany Harris

Photo by John Matychuk on Unsplash

Perhaps it was how he adjusted non-existent microphone stands during breakfast, his ridged fingers finding phantom frets across the table. Perhaps it was when he began calling his granddaughter Ella, scatting bent melodies into her curls while she napped. His family had orchestrated their gentlest deception – strings of cafe lights on the back deck, his daughter's friends disguised as jazz enthusiasts clutching old vinyl sleeves. His son even learned to mix virgin Stingers in proper cut crystal, tawny-colored apple juice catching the light. Perhaps it was how his wife slipped on her sequined red dress from '82, the one with the torn hem she'd worn the night they first played that dive bar in Memphis, rolling her stockings up slowly while he tuned his makeshift bass. Perhaps it's in the way he plays air underneath the stars, as they all lean in close, nodding in rhythms only he can hear.

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Tiffany hasn’t been the same since Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout discovered the world doesn’t wait for garbage to take itself out. Her lines have appeared or are forthcoming in: Buckman Journal, Moonstone Press, Creation Mag, and elsewhere. When she’s not writing, she’s busy convincing herself that sarcasm counts as cardio.

This story won Second Prize in the January 25 Monthly Micro Competition.