Yard Sale
By Lori Cramer
November 15, 2024
November 15, 2024
Boxes of your belongings blanket my tiny front yard in the early-morning haze. Vehicles converge upon my street, a dinged-up van sputtering into the space where you used to park your truck. Car doors slam. Strangers spill onto the sidewalk, coins clanking in their pockets. Picking through your possessions, people barrage me with questions like “Got any baseball cards?” and “Would you take a dollar for this?” Crumpled bills are pressed into my palm in exchange for the suit you wore to my sister’s wedding, the mugs you drank your coffee from, the hoodie you had on the night that changed my life. The sky darkens. A storm threatens. The crowd moves on. I place the remaining items on the curb with a “Free” sign, then go inside, expecting relief but discovering instead that I still haven’t given up hope that you’ll change your mind and come home.
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Lori Cramer’s short prose has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, Flash Fiction Magazine, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Best Microfiction. Links to her writing can be found at https://loricramerfiction.wordpress.com. X: @LCramer29.
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Author’s Note:
One night, I dreamed about a yard sale going on in the neighborhood where I grew up, which sparked the idea of a woman selling her ex’s possessions without his knowledge. Originally, I’d planned to write the piece in list format, featuring items to be sold like “the scowl he gives me when…,” but then I thought Who would want to buy that? I used verbs like “barrage” and hard consonants in phrases like “coins clanking in their pockets” to show the jarring effect on the woman, how what she thought would be cathartic turned out to be anything but.