How to Properly Clean Ashes
R.S. Nelson
Step one: Pretend that the fire never happened, that the ashes aren’t there, spread out on your roof, the entire backyard, and the lounge chairs where you used to sit together to watch the sunset. Pretend that the birds are still singing and that he’s still inside, smoking a cigarette. Pretend the soot in the air isn’t crawling inside your chest whenever you breathe, finding a cozy home in your lungs.
Step two: Grab your broom and wield it like a sword. Smash the plastic grass repeatedly until you swear you hear it crying for mercy. Hit the chairs and the rug to remove all the dust from the fire-retardant, rusty-colored marks on the place that used to be your together paradise. Scatter the ashes and scream like a banshee while you do it until your well-intended neighbors ask if you are okay. Yell that you're peachy and they better worry about their soot-covered walls instead.
Step three: Pray for the ashes to leave and, when that fails, beg the wind to take them back to the hills. In the meantime, leave a tenth message in his voicemail, imploring him to return. And when that fails too, find a way to build a time machine, to travel back to the happy time before everything went to hell, and you were left alone to deal with its aftermath.
Step four: Go to the backyard and cry. Your tears will fall onto the ashes, creating puddles of soot-covered mud—dark, just like his heart. Cry until your hands, feet, and clothes are covered in that substance. Then shower, have dinner, and go to bed alone. Repeat the next day, and the next, and the next.
Step five: Walk out to the backyard. The fire residues are almost gone. Grab the broom and clean. By the hundredth time, it’ll start to look like it did before everything was ravaged and your heart went up in flames. Before your husband went for a pack of smokes. Before you thought you saw him on the top of the hills, holding a lighter.
When it’s finally done, look at the now blue sky and breathe it all in.
Step two: Grab your broom and wield it like a sword. Smash the plastic grass repeatedly until you swear you hear it crying for mercy. Hit the chairs and the rug to remove all the dust from the fire-retardant, rusty-colored marks on the place that used to be your together paradise. Scatter the ashes and scream like a banshee while you do it until your well-intended neighbors ask if you are okay. Yell that you're peachy and they better worry about their soot-covered walls instead.
Step three: Pray for the ashes to leave and, when that fails, beg the wind to take them back to the hills. In the meantime, leave a tenth message in his voicemail, imploring him to return. And when that fails too, find a way to build a time machine, to travel back to the happy time before everything went to hell, and you were left alone to deal with its aftermath.
Step four: Go to the backyard and cry. Your tears will fall onto the ashes, creating puddles of soot-covered mud—dark, just like his heart. Cry until your hands, feet, and clothes are covered in that substance. Then shower, have dinner, and go to bed alone. Repeat the next day, and the next, and the next.
Step five: Walk out to the backyard. The fire residues are almost gone. Grab the broom and clean. By the hundredth time, it’ll start to look like it did before everything was ravaged and your heart went up in flames. Before your husband went for a pack of smokes. Before you thought you saw him on the top of the hills, holding a lighter.
When it’s finally done, look at the now blue sky and breathe it all in.
R.S. Nelson is a Latina writer who lives and finds inspiration in Southern California. Her flash fiction has appeared in Twin Bird Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Every Writer, SciFiSat, Every Day Fiction, and elsewhere. Her short stories will come out in three anthologies during 2025.