In This Heat, I’m Not Myself

By Skyler Melnick / Issue 19

First, I shrivel like a toe in the bathtub. There is no moisture left in my body. It’s in a puddle at my feet. I’m dizzy without it. A kindly young gentleman helps me cross the road.

On the other side, there are children. Mine. No, my grandchildren. Little girls with braids down to their toes. They surround me, swaddle me. I am dripping with grandchildren. I can’t breathe.

I whistle for the young gentleman.

Get me back to the other side, I beg.

Ma’am, he says, patting my shoulder, sweat droplets falling like rain. This is the side you want to be on.

Please—

He’s gone. Little girls accumulate, more and more. They’re all over me. Dangling from my ears, crawling up my nose, frolicking between my toes.

The temperature reaches 100 degrees.

The little girls get thirsty. They drink their grandmother.

Skyler Melnick is an MFA candidate for Fiction Writing at Columbia University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, Gone Lawn, Moon City Review, and Night Picnic Press.