By Laura Besley
Every May when the apple trees blush, he climbs the mountain, sits on his shadow at the summit. He remembers a different mountain, different blossoms, and a girl.
*
‘Christopher,’ she said, over-enunciating each syllable to pronounce his name properly. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not? I love you, you love me.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘I love my family too, and they need me. Here.’
‘I’ll stay then.’
‘No. It would never work.’
He looked at the skyscrapers in the distance and kissed her forehead.
*
At home he kisses his wife.
‘Nice walk?’ she asks, accent different; smooth as silk.
Laura Besley is the author of micro fiction collection, 100neHundred (Arachne Press, 2021), and flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers (Dahlia Books, 2020).
She has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. Her work has been nominated for Best Micro Fiction and her story, To Cut a Long Story Short, will appear in the Best Small Fiction anthology in 2021.
Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea.
The Birdseed 