(the danger of becoming small)

[flash fiction]

After an argument that night in the grocery store over the merits of grass-fed cow’s milk, your lug-headed boyfriend told you to keep quiet, to take up less space, to become less noticeable. So you sucked your breath inward, purpling your skin from lack of oxygen and subtracting your sound from the universe. Then you folded yourself limb upon limb, in halves, then halves again infinitesimally, until you compressed yourself into the space of an atom, then you went even further, causing nuclear fission and an explosion more powerful than the heat of a million suns, thus collapsing the space-time continuum. It is in this way you were reborn, upending all of creation, casting your boyfriend and the grocery store into the great void.

G.G. Silverman lives north of Seattle with a very compassionate husband and a very cute dog, whose markings resemble a tuxedo. G.G. has won awards for her short fiction and is currently at work on a short story collection as well as the follow-up to her first novel. When not writing, she can often be found hiking, downward-dogging, and training on her compound bow. She is fairly certain that coffee is what keeps her alive. For more info, please visit www.ggsilverman.com.