Water World, by Meg Pokrass

Nocturne, Grey and Silver, by James McNeill Whistler (USA) 1873

Water World

Her husband was sitting near the window, holding the gun again. Talking to God on the ceiling, wishing God had treated him differently. The husband had become so much like her father, thinking it all came down to money. How his heart had never opened up to her because he was poor. How wrong to be trapped in a life like this, he said. She was always looking for home in his eyes, but as the evening gathered, her heart felt dry and alone. Green water was sloshing up against their house, it never stopped sloshing against the doors. It’s nobody's fault, she said. And this is why he pointed the gun toward her and then pointed at the bruise of early evening and said, I'm letting you swim away. And finally, this is how she did it—got herself into a skinny old boat, the boat that used to belong to her father—and let the green water take care of her.

Meg Pokrass

Read Meg's story from a Renoir painting.
​www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/rose-by-meg-pokrass

​Meg Pokrass is the author of eight flash fiction collections, an award-winning collection of prose poetry,  two novellas-in-flash, an award winning collection of prose poetry, and a 2020 collection of microfiction, "Spinning to Mars" which won the Blue Light Book Award. Her work has appeared in  Electric Literature, Washington Square Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Split Lip and McSweeney'shas been anthologized in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015) and The Best Small Fictions 2018 and 2019. She serves as Founding Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020 and Festival Curator of Flash Fiction Festival U.K. and teaches flash fiction online and in person. Find out more at megpokrass.com.