by Alice de Hubp

I think the walls are spying
on me. They whisper when I
walk, voices scattering, sounds like rain
pitter-pattering. The fire crackles and I
think it’s a message. From beyond. My grandmother, God
rest her, can’t have left this world
so easily as she did, one ragged breath
on this corporeal plane, the next exhale
gone. Maybe the flickering blue light
next to her name on Facebook Messenger,
the cruel memorial profile, isn’t a scammer, but
her. Her, trying to
communicate. The internet works
in mysterious ways. She died in two thousand
eighteen and I was shame-shocked. The phone
calling. My unflappable mother crying. Last time
I’d seen my grandmother I was graduating
from my stupid high school, a continent away.
I didn’t cry myself until a week later, back at
university, even farther away. Over my patterned
covers. We bought them at Bed Bath and Beyond,
the banal ritual of middle-class college shopping.
I want to answer the whispers, the fire, the incessant notifications.
I think I should answer the walls, the flames,
the words, the flickers, the blue light.

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About the Author:

Alice de Hubp originally hails from Porto Alegre, Brazil, but she lives in Mexico City with her partner and cat. Alice’s fiction and poetry have been published in Frontier Poetry, The Morgue Mag, Lunae Lit Review, the B’K, Reading Into Culture, and Blue Crystal Lit’s Echoes of All Hallows’ Eve collection. She has upcoming work in Frontier Poetry, in Spirit Lake Review, and in Procrastinating Writers United’s I Haven’t Made It Home Yet anthology. Her work was longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction award and is published in its tenth anniversary anthology. When she’s not writing, she’s learning to figure skate or make cocktails. Her favorite apple is Red Delicious. Find her full list of published work at alicedehubp.carrd.co.