I kick my legs in the shopping cart until Mom hands me a warm cookie from the bakery. The weekly trip to the grocery store means crinkly wax paper and brown sugar melting on my tongue. When I’m old enough to behave without reward, she’ll say no to buying sweets. Eventually, I get the message through just a look. “Too fattening.” Now, she sits across from me, frail and memory fading, and takes one bite of cake before pushing it away. Her wrinkles cascade in a frown, heavy from the tiny joys we’ve been silent to over the years.
Kristina T. Saccone’s flash fiction and creative nonfiction appeared or are forthcoming in Fractured Lit, Cease, Cows, Gone Lawn, Six Sentences, LEON Literary Review, Red Fez, The Bangor Literary Journal, Emerge Literary Journal, and Unearthed. She curates Flash Roundup, a weekly email featuring the latest releases in flash fiction, and she's querying a flash anthology of stories about caring for our aging parents. Find her on Twitter at @kristinasaccone or haunting small independent bookstores in the Washington, DC, area.