By Anthony St. George
Facing the shelf of dusty houseplants, I grit my teeth. She can’t get away with this, calling me stingy. What proof did she have other than my refusal to splurge on fancy, twisted, metallic blue birthday candles for my mother’s eightieth? Her logic is questionable. For her part, she’d only gotten our mother a set of tea towels from a tourist cart in Wenceslas Square, Prague. This would show her. My hand reached past the violets, hovered, then gripped the edge of the matte-white ceramic pot—a ghost orchid, rare and fresh.
Anthony St. George lives with his husband in San Francisco, where he currently speculates about the future in the form of a novel and accompanying short story collection (“The Warring States”). Recent Short stories and flash fiction pieces from the collection and beyond appear in Idle Ink, Fleas on the Dog, and Blind Corner Literary Magazine. He appears on Twitter at @asgriobhadh and links to other publications and his artwork can be found at: https://anthonystgeorge.com/.
The Birdseed 