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Experience the thrills of the Weekly Poems Contest.
--
January 15th, 2026
Flash Fiction Takeover Magazine Contest #1 – First Place
by Mary Anne Griffiths
I am bare bones now, shorn barren of my blond curls. I have come close to the skull and colored my roots white to pare down and become pure. I take your hand, one more time, just knowing. You turn to look at me. I catch you, ever so slightly wincing, skillfully morphing it into a smile I will never forget. We are laughing with our friends in your living room. The echoes fill the high ceilings and fall to the hardwood floor.
Your mother comes down the stairs moving like Duchamp's, Nude No. 2, sweet from her bath, musked with divorce. Her silky 45-year-old legs slip out from her bathrobe after two shots of vodka with us. And as we gather up our coats to go out into the night, we leave her silhouette in the Victorian window; absolute, almost virginal, to spook us from our youth.
About the Author
Mary Anne Griffiths resides in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada.
Read the writer's biography and Flash Fiction Takeover publications
on Mary Anne Griffiths's Artist Page.
Flash Fiction Takeover Collection
This short fiction is also featured in
Flash Fiction Takeover Collection #1,
published in the Flash Fiction Takeover Library.
Keywords: youth, parents, freedom, relationships, age, beauty
Previously published in Flash Fiction Takeover Magazine:
It
by Anna Nike Leskowsky
Flash Fiction Takeover Magazine is part of Flash Fiction Takeover and waxpoetryart.com.
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