The Time Puddle Above Evelyn’s Garden
by Autumn Bettinger
A brackish-looking puddle materializes above Evelyn’s garden. She pours a cup of tea with hands that swell in the oceanic currents of arthritis. She ponders the undulating impossibility over her morning pills.
Evelyn’s galoshes squelch to a stop between rows of heirlooms and soft clouds of dill.
She looks up.
An alternate Evelyn peers back.
An Evelyn who compressed time and space when she was young, instead of marrying a
man who snuffed her brilliance.
The Evelyns reach for themselves.
They dip fingers through their reflection.
Tomatoes ripen and fall, dill seeds litter the ground.
A garden without an Evelyn.
Autumn Bettinger is a short-form fiction writer and full-time mother of two living in Portland, Oregon. She is a 2024 Fishtrap fellow, has won the Tadpole Press 100-Word Writing Contest, The Not Quite Write Flash Fiction Prize and the Silver Scribes Prize. All of Autumn’s published works are at autumnbettinger.com
This story was shortlisted in the November 24 Monthly Micro Competition.