First Lines
Even though it was spring, God’s time for new life and rebirth, beneath three feet of hard-packed dirt, the baby wouldn’t stop crying.
Unlike back in Asheville, real flowers were hard to come by at Grandma Charko’s house. But they were necessary. Two weeks ago Sylvia had grabbed a handful of zinnias from the neighbor’s garden. Last week she’d lifted roses from the top of a shiny gravestone. Yesterday she’d even sacrificed the carnation Grandma received at church, pressing it down into the dry, unyielding ground.
“See, baby? See what a seed can do?”
But still the baby kept crying.
The Journal
Crack the Spine publishes diverse and sharp literary works, including flash fiction, micro-fiction, poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction in their weekly online magazine