By Melissa Llanes Brownlee
She’s prone to losing things. A shoe here. A ring there. Fish find them in their bellies. Trees grow roots around them. She has a whole lake full of treasure filled fish boxes. A whole forest floor embedded with her wayward shoes, lost when she decided it was best to run from the prince than stay for the party. So many princes. So many parties. If the princes only knew that they wouldn’t need her dowry if they just went fishing in the lake instead of fishing for her with their mango breasts and betel lips compliments as if being compared to food or spices was appealing at all. She would gladly lose a million bangles sliding down her arms into the gaping mouths of fish than wait for a prince to catch her.
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer, living in Japan, has fiction in Milk Candy Review, Claw & Blossom, Bending Genres, Micro Podcast, (mac)ro(mic), Complete Sentence, The Daily Drunk, Sledgehammer Lit, Necessary Fiction, Have Has Had and elsewhere. She was selected for Best Small Fictions 2021. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at www.melissallanesbrownlee.com.
The Birdseed 