The Second Time
Sebnem E. Sanders
She sits in the diner alone, sipping coffee from a cup. Her phone rings. She picks it up and speaks. Gazing at the empty street lit by lamp posts and the occasional passing car, she rises and steps outside. It’s early morning. The city seems deserted except for a few nighthawks standing in doorways, and the homeless sleeping in the alleys.
She keeps walking, her head bursting with thoughts. Her pace accelerates until everything around her vanishes and memories begin to haunt her.
‘You never get anything right, do you?’
She stops. No, she’s not going. Not now. She’s sworn.
‘You’re not smart enough, not like your brothers.’
Her father's voice reverberates through her mind. She hasn’t seen him for more than a decade.
He used to love her - when did it all begin? At puberty? When she said she was going to be a musician, not a scientist, a doctor like her brothers. She loved her cello. All she'd wanted to do at that time was to attend the music academy.
‘A cellist? Are you going to be a busker and perform in the streets? In the underground, perhaps, and collect alms?’
Granny gets angry with him and supports her through the academy. She leaves home at eighteen and never returns. Mum secretly attends her concerts, sometimes her brothers also come. They never talk to him about her. He never acknowledges her achievements. She plays in an orchestra and gives private lessons. She’s financially independent and free of any criticism from him.
Mum’s voice rings inside her head. ‘Think about it, will you? It’s my duty to tell you. Not long now.’
She turns around. Each note of Elgar’s cello concerto, playing in her mind. The day is breaking over the city. Light embraces the darkness and pixels of colours brighten the gloom. She remembers her budgies and how they used to sing. He gave them to her as a birthday gift and taught her how to take care of them.
She heads to the underground and wanders down empty corridors. It was their singing that triggered the passion of music in her. The melodies they created each day and sang to each other. He gave them to her, to her…
She halts, places her hand on the wall tiles. Their coldness seeps into her palm. She sobs. The scar in her heart bleeds out. Sorrow and anger blend into tears. Clenched fists hit the wall. A scream escapes from her mouth and echoes through the halls. She wraps her arms around her body and bends down. And now he’s dying—dying… she’s losing him again, for good.
*
Sebnem E. Sanders is a native of Istanbul, Turkey. Currently, she lives on the eastern shores of the Southern Aegean where she dreams and writes Flash Fiction and Flash Poesy, as well as longer works of fiction. Her flash stories have appeared in the Harper Collins Authonomy Blog, The Drabble, Sick Lit Magazine, Twisted Sister Lit Mag, Spelk Fiction, The Bosphorus Review of Books, Three Drops from the Cauldron, The Rye Whiskey Review, CarpeArte Journal, Yellow Mama Webzine, Punk Noir Magazine, Flash Fiction Offensive, and The Cabinet of Heed, as well as two anthologies: Paws and Claws and One Million Project, Thriller Anthology. She has a completed manuscript, The Child of Heaven and two works in progress, The Child of Passion and The Lost Child. Her collection of short and flash fiction stories, Ripples on the Pond, was published in December 2017. More information can be found at her website where she publishes some of her work:
https://sebnemsanders.wordpress.com/