The Centifictionist

Although you are close enough for our hands to touch, I do not dare.

I stand in silence over the kitchen counter, watching your mouth move. Talking to you is like talking to myself. Your answers are absent minded, or just absent. It’s a family trait, your distraction. It’s selective hearing, a disconnect. I wish I could do that too, but I hear everything, even the inaudible.

This morning I realize that you cannot help yourself. Criticism is your addiction. Your drug is the ability to damage.

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Rimma Kranet is a Russian-American fiction writer with a Bachelor’s Degree in English from University of California Los Angeles. Her short fiction has appeared in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Construction Lit, Club Plum, Coal Hill Review, Change Seven Magazine, EcoTheo, The Common Breath, Drunk Monkey, and Short, Vigorous Roots: A Contemporary Flash Fiction Collection of Migrant Voices. She resides between Florence, Italy and Los Angeles, California. Twitter: @RKranet. Instagram: @rkranet.