Heather, 19, found by her dad in the family farm, a needle curled in her fist. Outside, acres of mute soybeans, grasshoppers snapping, the sky blush pink. Her brother remembers Heather’s face in a mirror, squinting, half-way to pretty. Remembers the way they played catch with osage fruit, the time he dragged her out of a trailer where kids nodded off. At the funeral, he takes a strip of buprenorphine, slips it inside his mouth. Like a lozenge or a prayer. To help fight cravings. Remembers the way they once watched a buzzard gliding above the farm, circling its prey.
Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her fiction has been published in Bright Flash Literary Review, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dreams, Flash Boulevard, Switch and elsewhere. She is also a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, including Best of the Net 2023 for flash fiction. She can be reached at @bsherm36.
The Centifictionist 
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