Some of Our Fave Drabbles from 2019

By The Drabble

To celebrate the end of the fifth calendar year of our existence, we present some our favorite posts of 2019. While we are grateful to every Drabble reader and writer for helping to make this site such an unexpected success, we want to recognize a few pieces that truly accomplished what we were setting out to do when we began this blog almost five years ago. Here (in no particular order) are a few drabbles we truly loved in 2019. We hope you do, too:

Unconditional by Toni G.

When You See Me Walk by J. Nayana Nair

The Poems I Have Not Written by John Malone

A Lie for My Boy by Roy Gomez

Lonely Photographer by Bello Olabisi

My Father by Dianne Moritz

Partners by S.B. Borgersen

My White Cane is a Magic Wand by Rebecca L. Holland

Some of the Time by Ali Grimshaw

Space Dew by Neil Clark

Your Mother, the Clown by David Derey

Darkness by G. Allen Willbanks

The Very Short Poem

By John L. Malone

I’ve got a poem for you, a very short one, he promised with a garrulous grin, and then, in a long-winded introduction in which all the masters of brevity were cited from Basho to Lydia Davis, he proceeded to demolish all notions of shortness. The poem took ten seconds, the intro five minutes.

         
John Malone is a South Australian writer of short stories, flash fiction and poetry.

Shelter

By Matt Paul

‘Seek Immediate Cover,’ flashed the tornado update before the TV died. I screamed for Callie until my voice splintered. She wasn’t in the basement, under mommy’s bed, or hiding in the fairy-lighted crawlspace. I called my wife’s name, forgetting for a moment. Hailstones battered the front porch, and I spotted Callie in the street. Her mother’s red hair wind-socking, pink gel shoes peeling from the asphalt. As I bolted out the door she stretched her arms skywards, to the better place I’d said mommy had flown, her tiny hands clenching-releasing as if reaching for a hug.

The Envy of the Village

By J. E. Kennedy

Old Mrs Bergman’s roses were the envy of the village. The bushes bloomed in a congregation of scarlet and coral, sun-flare yellow and delicious tangerine. They spilled over the walls and lit up the pavement with their scattered petals, like delicate wishes skipping along the breeze, destination unknown.

Mrs Bergman plucked and preened, watered and fed. She whispered sweet nothings. She told the roses all that she would have told him if he were here. And they bloomed.

At night she would take the fading telegram from the drawer: Missing in action.

And she waited to meet him again.

Disappearing is Harder Than You’d Think

By Anonymous

First, you must shed the detritus of your life. The car will be the last worldly belonging to go: donate it. Toss your phone in the river. Photo albums, love letters, diaries: burn them. Cash out your bank account, stuff the cash into your couch cushions. Drag the couch to the curb, put a FREE sign on it. Flush the pills. Tie your wedding ring to a helium balloon, wait for a gust, and let go. Don’t watch. Swallow the hurt.

Now, walk away and don’t stop until you’re gone.

Survival Mandate: Two Haikus

By Cap’n 575

i.
Only to survive
a nanosecond longer
mountain battles sea.

ii.
Someday (not today)
We all become the mountain
We are all the sea

Lost Mother

By Hannah England

He was four when she lost him, tomorrow he will be eight.

Her own mother had died, a loss she cushioned with increasing alcohol before being dismissed from work, excused from her marriage, and barred from motherhood. Without the strength to claw her way back, he has been without her for half his life. He probably has no memories of her, just fleeting glimpses of the shadows she cast during his babyhood.

As she darts down dark alleyways, she hopes his dad is wrapping birthday presents in colored paper. She doesn’t know what she would give him, if she could.
      
Hannah England has written for The Guardian, the Same journal, SpillWords Press and Our Queer Stories.