2nd Place Winner – Flash 405, June 2026: “Loop”
Nonfiction
The morning after my grandma was raped by my great-grandpa, she fled into the night, the road unfurling before her like a long black ribbon. She made it 97 miles. She was fourteen. Sixty years later, she sat before a blank paper and could not write her name. In my last memory of her, she hurled her thin fist at the bathroom mirror. Why won’t this woman leave me alone, she cried, shards of glass shining in her hand like stars. She tried to fight my grandpa as he tucked her into bed—the next day, jagged red striped his cheek. Twenty years she’s been gone. I keep picturing it: the child on the roadside with her thumb stuck out, a sort of prayer for mercy.
Judge’s Comments: This piece travels through so much time and emotion in such a short, breathless space. Its evocative imagery and parallels makes it a haunting exploration of how trauma manifests, how a person can come to haunt themselves, that grandmas are still little girls inside, and how we continue to leave so many unprotected.
Sydney Cimarolli is a poet and educator from St. Louis, Missouri. Her work is published or forthcoming in Thimble Literary Magazine, Phil Lit, and The Healing Muse. She is an MFA student at the University of Maryland and can be found on Instagram @sydneycimarolli.
Photo by Ferdi Nusaputra