Frances Orrok (@francesorrok.bsky.social)

'Ghost Grapes' by Sarah Freligh The night Mamaw got sick, the rain fell and froze. I heard my father get out of bed and head to the vineyard to try and save the grapes. I heard the worry in his voice, frayed as old flannel. By morning the vines were trapped in ice. When the sun came out, our world looked like a bowl full of diamonds. My mother slipped Mamaw’s ring from her finger and tucked it in a scrap of velvet left over from a dress she’d made me. The grapes were buried under coffins of ice, as perfect as pearls. --- Sarah Freligh is the author of seven books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize, Hereafter, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella-in-Flash Contest, and the recently-released Other Emergencies. Her work has appeared many literary journals and anthologized in New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton 2018), and Best Microfiction (2019-22). Among her awards are poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation. 'Ghost Grapes' was first published in Splonk, Issue One (2019). http://dlvr.it/TLM4BZ