Well, Maybe Not a Thousand …

a six sentence story

It was the sort of summer that one vaguely remembers – an idle summer of a thousand different hours, except for a few days when Farmer Lars harvested the fields and left stubble and nowhere for rabbits and field mice to hide – hawks waiting in the trees with their sharp, hungry eyes.

I remember counting a thousand falling stars – the nights were dark and sweet and almost black – that sort of dark doesn’t exist anymore, and there was an ancient dresser and a wooden chest in my bedroom. It smelled of lavender and thyme, and I remember that scent clearly from smelling it a thousand times.

And after lunch I was always down by the river with its banks in bloom, wildflowers of a thousand different scents and wedged between more-than-a-thousand blackberries, the river flowed full of crawfish and minnows and the occasional silvery-grey eel.

Grandmother was fearful when I was near water, it having tried three times to take me, so she kept a glass of water under my bed so water would know me, know I meant it no harm, know to leave me alone.

One night when I was thirsty, I drank all the water in that glass – that was the first and last time I lied to my grandmother, “No, I didn’t drink it,” and I never forgot how that lie made me feel.¹

1. Written for Six Sentence Story including the word "wedge"