By Beth Richards
My nephew and I are selecting a grave marker—for his mother, my sister—to distinguish her space, which is tucked at the foot of another grave: my father, the grandfather my nephew knows only by name. We’re in the Bible Belt. We don’t have many gravestone décor options.
Lilies? No.
Cross? No.
Bible? Hell, no.
Angel?
We laugh so loud the secretary at the Rustin Vault And Monument Company glares from her office.
My nephew whispers, “She’s gonna call the cops on us.”
I say, “Your mother would be proud.”
We keep looking, find a small hummingbird in mid-flight, hinged wings extended. There’s no color other than granite, but we know it is a ruby-throated, that it will thrum above her in perpetual flight.
Which is what a real hummingbird does, or seems to do. Archilocus colubris. Latin, I think, for tiny, feisty, brilliant bird, wings beating 80 times a second as it sips from its favorite tubular flowers, breathing more than 200 times per minute.
My feisty sister’s tubular flower of choice was an Icehouse beer. She was perpetual motion. Near the end, she sipped air through the slow squeeze of tumor on airway.
She tells me she dreams of flying.
Hummingbirds migrate a thousand miles nonstop. Early one winter morning, I wake with a start. A thousand miles away, my sister rises up in her bed. Coughs. Her wings pulse once. Blood from her lungs pours out and down.
Ruby-throated.
Beth Richards’s work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Talking Writing, The Cincinnati Review, and Twin Flame Literary; and in three anthologies: Coming Out in the South, Into Sanity, and The Masters Review. She earned an MFA from the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University.
Image by Michael McGarry courtesy of Pexels
I laughed out loud at “Hell no.” Such a lovely juxtaposition with your beautiful hummingbird descriptions and your ruby throated comparison. The pictures you paint are rich and stunning.
The vast difference between 80 beats per minute and 1 beat made me pause and inhale this finality. Exquisitely sad and exquisitely written.
Many thanks to all of your for your careful reading and kind comments. Much appreciated?
Elegantly written. The silky ribbon of red, dancing throughout the piece. Such brevity and compelling connections made. A lovely piece. My sympathies for the profound loss of your sister.
Oh this is so well done. Especially love the final lines.
Beautiful in all of its turns through scene, so vivid, to the ending. Congratulations to you and to the River Teeth crew for publishing!
Dear Beth Richards,
“She tells me she dreams of flying” What a powerful essay of loss and love. Thank you for sharing this.
So beautiful. Thank you.
I wonder if you would like to submit this to read for Flash Fiction Forum(we also accept flash nonfiction) i love it but other team members need to weigh in. http://www.flashfictionforum.com
Next reading is feb 11 th
Lovely. Hummingbirds are a favorite for me, so I loved the way the characters select the hummingbird rather than the tired traditional images for the tombstone. Nicely done.
Thank you for this. I have known the power of special connections between sisters. I also know the Bible Belt and the power (and scarce money) handed over for funerals and grave sites. I loved the turn of the story at the end, the step back into time announced through the use of present tense.
The last line, the blood revealing her release into another beautiful form, maybe a truer, freer form. Gorgeous.