Grief Manifests as Dancing in the Animal Crossing Butterfly Exhibit
By Ashley McCurry
July 15, 2023
July 15, 2023
I
I just finished planting a garden for a humanoid cat with Buddy Holly glasses. My therapist is concerned with my time spent gaming and suggests getting out of the house more often, maybe meditation. I gather fruit, dig for fossils. Snow begins to fall, and I think of penguins.
II
My best friend died last week, after beating cancer two months prior. When he’d rung the cancer-free bell, a golden resonance flooded the cold, sterile hallways. Once he found himself within those walls again, the world had changed, and we visited through the window of his first-floor hospital room. I’m grieving the loss of a reality in which he would grow old and visit Antarctica, the last continent on his list.
III
I met someone today—a green-haired avatar who looked like Billy Idol. She gifted me a rare fish for my aquarium. I gave her a black rose. We watched shooting stars and danced in the museum’s butterfly exhibit, and I forgot I’m deathly afraid of butterflies, for a few minutes, with her.
IV
The nerdy cat requested a new adventure. Said there had to be more to life and asked permission to leave the island. I log out and place the console in a shoebox, slide it under my bed. Maybe he has a point.
V
Sunlight smears across the blue, marbled tile of my local aquarium as eager children and distracted parents swarm around the new penguin exhibit. Plump tufts of tuxedo feathers shuffle behind glass. Every so often, they appear to notice the spectators—the outside looking in. The inaccessible, unreachable alternative just beyond. Unable to change their circumstances, they press onward, tottering away from wide-eyed children who press dirty palms and faces to smudged glass.
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Ashley McCurry resides in the Southeastern U.S. with her husband and four rescue dogs. You can find her recent work in Sky Island Journal, Switch Microfiction, FlashFlood Journal, and Fairfield Scribes. She is also a staff writer and editor for Cream Scene Carnival and currently reads for Okay Donkey and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her work has been longlisted in the 2023 Bath Flash Fiction and Brilliant Flash Fiction writing contests.
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