Rebirth With a Dandelion

Flash Fiction by Lauren Kawamoto

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A girl lies on her back in the middle of a street, drained of wind and presence. 

The gravel is gritty and tough, remnants of a long-ago paving project half completed, then abandoned when the going became too difficult in trying weather, but her gold-flecked eyes remain fixed on the azure expanse of the sky that broadens and stretches like a tarp across the world that is known and yet unknown. 

The blue is dying slowly, strong, bold colors draining where the ceiling of the world meets the golden horizon and leaching into husky indigo. The stars will emerge soon, strewn like so many toys after a child’s ill-timed tantrum across a playroom floor, and only their light and the ivory glow of the moon will light the road she is sprawled across, patiently waiting for time and a single vehicle to encounter each other. 

If only a breeze would come to scatter the lone pebbles littering the curb, she thinks, thoughts swirling murkily in the dark corners of her brain.