By Myna Chang
They agree only on a stick shift, four-on-the-floor, hard pull into second. Their differences are stark and perfect. She drives first, hugs the curves and straightaways out of town, shifts into fourth, tops the rise and soars beyond torque and dust and duty. His turn. He downshifts, holds the engine in check, flexes his control where he can. They park on the bridge, flick stones into the dry riverbed, wait for the splash.
Myna Chang’s work has been selected for Best Small Fictions, Fractured Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, and The Citron Review, among others. She is the winner of the 2020 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the 2021 New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. She lives in Maryland with her family. Read more at MynaChang.com or @MynaChang.
The Birdseed 