by Tara Dugan
1st Place Winner – Flash 405, August 2025: “Normal”
Experimental
Donkey Kong
Short bright tie against hairy chest making animal sounds when breaking whatever he can throw. In the corner with your books not speaking you were also a thing and he could break you too.
DK up the stairs in the tree pounding his chest. Too far away he thought you were Mario never asking Who goes there a comfort nearly because Nobody was not a thing and satisfied no one including you. Even you didn’t know why.
Popsicle
The sticks at the heart of them you called bones not knowing better. Always a final sliver of red supposedly cherry eluding your tongue splatting wherever it shouldn’t. On the couch once her only nice thing in life she told you. Bloody thumbprint worked into the fabric even when she was on it instantly and on you for it always afterward saying Can’t I have anything nice.
Each time missing that last sweetest piece could you ever get it into your mouth but you dug down to the bone anyway. On the sidewalk where the ants already knew to wait somehow. On your bare toes once at the beach the ants were there too making your skin the concrete red-flavor cherry bites left behind. You still got down to the bone the best part that splintered in your teeth.
Antenna
Because when you left and you did leave knowing you would never come back you knew something was bound to follow. The way your accent breaks syllables in your mouth or how you open doors for perfect strangers who don’t look up saying without words You are not from here. The ghost on your skin would haunt the person in your bed who would pull away a silence held bodily without answering Who goes there.
But you did leave and are still leaving and never left because the thing that came with you was you looking into the rearview thinking you wouldn’t and seeing the antenna on the house you left that didn’t work and never had. People in this place you live and work in that has not worked its way in you yet see the antenna on this house and that house but only you see the house you won’t see again and only you will wonder if that antenna is as broken as the one rusting on the roof in the image you turn back to knowing you shouldn’t.
Judge’s Comments:
Some reasons to love this piece:
You can chew on the words.
When you swallow, an aluminum taste.
After the taste, a pit, settled.
This pit will never fruit. You will forever carry it.
Tara Dugan writes and homesteads in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in The Millions, Pangyrus, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere. She tends a small plot of the internet at tdugan.com.
Photo from Unsplash