Flash fiction
about last things.

Last things are only last in retrospect. At the time they look like any other Tuesday.

Endings without announcement · The weight of finality · What we don't know we're doing for the last time

The most affecting endings in literature are the ones that don't announce themselves. The last conversation with someone you will never speak to again, which felt at the time like any other conversation. The last time you were in a place before it changed beyond recognition. The last time you were the person you used to be, which happened without you noticing, on an ordinary afternoon. Flash fiction is ideally suited to last things because it is itself an ending: everything compressed toward the final line.

"He didn't know it was the last time he would see her. That was the thing about last times — you only recognised them when they were already past. By then the information was useless."

David — Tumbleweed Words

Last things writing requires the discipline to resist the portentous — to not signal that this is the last time, to let the scene play as ordinary. The weight arrives after, in the reader, when the implication lands. This is the Hemingway technique applied to its logical extreme: the surface is completely calm. Everything is happening underneath.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry written on trains, in hostels, and in city streets. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine. Pushcart-nominated. Read on Substack.