september 2019 winner: summer in suburbia by jordan palmer

Almost is such an ugly word. Every time I say it, I can taste the disappointment; the wasted potential of what could have been.

Once, when I was nine or ten, I was walking around the neighborhood with this girl who lived on my street, Livia. The kind of child mothers called angelic; quietly fluttering along. She reminded me of a butterfly.

It was hot, mid-July, but the pool was closed for cleaning. Livia invited me to walk to the corner store to get popsicles. We wandered the neighborhood, sucking down the icy treats. I got grape. She got cherry. It stained her teeth red.

I was daydreaming about cold weather when I heard Livia say my name. I turned to see her crouched down in front of our neighbor’s rose bush.

“Look.”

Her voice was soft. I peered over her shoulder; a butterfly, yellow and black, one wing nearly torn off.

“Look at its wing,” she said.

“Liv, leave it. You can’t help it now.”

“We can’t just leave it like that.” Her expression was strange. Slowly, she picked up the butterfly, each hand holding a delicate wing between pointer finger and thumb. She looked at it for a long moment and ripped off its wings.

I stared down at the tiny wingless body. “Why did you do that?” I asked.

Livia stood up and shrugged, “It was almost dead.”

Jordan was born and raised in San Francisco with an early love for writing. Recently graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Creative Writing, currently working on a collection of flash fiction to turn into a book.