Issue 03
flash creative non-fiction
“Twenty Questions”
by Amy Goldmacher
Is it alive?
Is it bigger than a breadbox?
When your husband tries on his tuxedo for a friend’s wedding and walks across the hardwood floor in his dress shoes, are you transported back forty years, to your childhood, when you heard your father leaving for work before the sun came up or coming home late at night from a week-long business trip?
Does it have a vibration, an energy that you can sense, if you try hard enough?
Can you open your eyes wider to take in more information?
Did you do this as a child, to anticipate your father’s needs, so that you were not in the path of his unpredictable anger?
Does it get pushed down and balled up until it turns malignant?
Do you hide it away under layers of achievement, organization, and on-top-of-it-ness?
Would people call you Type A, uptight?
Do you like order, stability, and predictability?
Is your husband, who likes spontaneity, confused or frustrated by your preferences?
If you go to therapy for it, does it get resolved?
If you take medication, are you better?
Can you learn where it came from?
Can you be fixed?
Is there one right answer?
If your husband isn’t happy, do you feel responsible?
Are you afraid you married your father, and you’re repeating old patterns?
If you anticipate disaster, can you prevent it?
If you learn to recognize it, can you do something about it?
*
Amy Goldmacher is an anthropologist and writer in Michigan. She has short nonfiction forthcoming or published in Essay Daily, Severance Magazine, and Please See Me and a “Tiny Love Story” in the “Modern Love” column of The New York Times.
Mary Senter is a writer, designer, and photographer who creates in a cabin in the woods on the shores of Puget Sound. She earned certificates in literary fiction writing from the University of Washington and an M.A. in strategic communication from WSU. Her work can be found in Ponder Review, Cleaver, SHARK REEF, and elsewhere. She is the graphic designer for Crab Creek Review. Visit her at www.marysenter.com.