The Perfect Scoop
By Donna Shanley
Did a dreaming cloud of darkness once feel an urge to push? To send part of itself, the fearful part, the hopeful part, into the void? The way we did, launching our hearts toward each other. The first warm, breathless collision, the quick gasp of finding. Of feeling ourselves made more by the offering.
Among the brightnesses it birthed, did that clouded heart notice the tiny bubble that swelled in glorious red, then slowly turned to chilled blue-green? If it felt panic after, when burning strawberry dimmed to polite blueberry and mint, who was there to say that it would be alright?
We walk side by side, but the distance between us is the immensity of galaxies. The ice-creams are pale spheres in the dusk, filling us as they diminish.
You lurch toward me and kiss my cheek. More a bump than a caress. I used to find your awkwardness endearing, puppy-ish. So many others did too that the weight of them crouches in my belly like an unborn planet: a lightless, leaden thing, a body not heavenly. For you, ‘someone else’ was a sweet addiction: different flavors, taste and toss. For me, we were the perfect scoop.
As we collide, the icy globe atop your cone plummets and splatters on the grass. New blueberry worlds spring from it, are instantly extinguished.
“It’ll be alright.” The words come from my mouth without being willed; reassurance that we pluck from habit. I hand you my cone. The ice-cream drips as we pass it back and forth, making a trail of glimmering specks. Stars you can’t wish on.
The rage that birthed worlds detonates inside me. I snatch the cone from you, wind my arm back and over. For a heartbeat I’m one with the universe; the ice-cream is a glorious arc, a mint-colored comet.
I splat it onto your chest, hard. “You’re so fucking clumsy!”
Your cheeks sag like they’re about to melt and run down your face. I imagine what flavor they’d be. I settle on Busted Banana. There’s bewilderment in your eyes, and hurt, as I snicker, but I know it’s not the violence that gets you, it’s the “clumsy.” Your never-fail ticket to approval, affection, love—torn up and thrown away.
You shuffle after me, dabbing at your shirt with small lost whimpers, as I head down the dimming street toward what we’ve called home. Crows prickle on power lines like thorns; burst into cawing thistle-bloom as I start to run. I pause, my heart yearning after their joyfully disconnected oneness, then slam the door, snatch the ice-cream tub from the fridge and heave it out the kitchen window. I hear yelps as it makes contact; think “dinosaur extinction!” Outside, you’re a melting ice-world as I race from room to room, switching on lamps, lighting candles, throwing back drapes; watching brightness pour into the void, watching it fling itself after the unfettered birds, knowing it will find a place to dream, knowing it will be alright. The thing about voids is, they’re always open to a new dream, to another extinction.
Donna Shanley lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she can see mountains and sometimes, a half-inch of ocean. Her fiction appears in Vestal Review, Ellipsis Zine, Flash Frontier, Milk Candy Review, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Citron Review, Nunum, Mom Egg Review, Crow & Cross Keys, and Best Microfiction 2024.