March 3​
2015
[ secret missives]
(Photo via Kevin Jaako on Flickr)
I have a new story up at Wigleaf today. It's a short piece of flash fiction, though I'll confess it's not as entirely fictional as most of my other stories. The envelope in this story exists, and I felt the way the narrator in this story did for a long time.
I don't think we forget previous heartbreaks completely, especially young love. It took me years after my breakup with my college boyfriend to stop missing him, and during those years, I wrote lots of secret notes that would never be seen by him, to him. Of course, gradually my life moved on and he faded into the background, but the way I felt is forever recorded in several of these secret missives.
Later, charged to write a piece of flash in somewhat of an episotolary form, I returned to these narratives, because I felt they were compelling and felt very honest. What you see here is my reinterpretation of some of those words -- with details of the relationship changed and certain life events altered.
Of course the real man that this story is based upon has long since moved on, but unlike the narrator in this story, so have I! I guess I like my stories gloomier than life -- I hope the girl in the story finds her own happiness around the corner soon.
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Something fun that Wigleaf offers its contributors is the opportunity to write a postcard to the magazine (or whomever you imagine Wigleaf to be). It's funny because the story I published is already in somewhat of an epistolary form (or at least, directed at a "you") and to write yet another piece that was at a "you" made the two feel somewhat complementary. I suppose in some ways you could imagine that the "Dear Wigleaf" postcard is aimed at the same "you" -- but you could also imagine them to be completely different people, and the writers to be also two completely different people. Either way, they complement each other in some way. (If you can't tell though, I was primarily inspired/frustrated by all the snow we've been getting over here.)
Anyway, read "Return to Sender" here, and my "Dear Wigleaf" postcard here.
And thank you to Scott Garson at Wigleaf for believing in this story!