I tell him to chase me and ask for a ten-second running start, a real one with “hippopotamus” between the numbers. I bolt but he’s fast for 54. Scurrying under brush, I crawl on middle-aged hands and knees into cold places where the snow doesn’t reach and I’m quiet, quiet, quiet but he’s getting closer, closer, closer, crazy close when a branch snatches the black wool hat from his head and spurs my give-away laughter. He swoops beneath the fragrant fir needles, capturing me in the heat of his torso, his arms, just as I wanted him to all along.
Tess Kelly, winner of the 2020 WNBA Writing Contest for Flash Prose, has been published in Ruminate and The RavensPerch. Tess lives in Portland, Oregon.