License
The house is an obstacle course so I have to feel my way to the kitchen with my fingertips. I have trouble sleeping if I am angry. My husband is away so I am very free with the switching on of lights. I put some water on to boil. Even though my mind is quite awake, my body is befuddled, and parched from the ruckus from my head. I hug myself against the cold, and look around for my cup. I have a different color for each day of the week but he had broken the purple one and not replaced it; bought when I could barely afford to do grocery shopping, during the week he told me that he had slept with one of his students. I cannot find a cup of that colour that is interesting enough, and have replaced it with another the color of ground pepper that can take on the tinge of what I want, if I match it properly. I bought the replacement on a winter’s cruise in the Caribbean that had been a dream of mine for so long that by the time it happened, the era was not quite right. My feet make a sucky sound on the tile and I notice a roach, flattened. They seem to appear when I am on the verge of losing restraint. They used to be agile but this one had been too slow even to avoid my nighttime slouching walk. They revolted me at one time but now all my emotions have the same hue. When I think of my current prime minister, it is the same, but I do not speak about it and in that manner, I avoid mixing up the kingdoms of human and insect.
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Girija Tropp’s flash fiction has recently been anthologised in The Irreal Reader and SmokeLong Quarterly: The Best of the First Ten Years. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.