• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to footer

Ghost Parachute

A Literary Magazine

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Archives
  • About
  • Submissions
  • Blog

Partial Diary of an Old Wig

August 1, 2022 By Meg Pokrass

Partial Diary of an Old Wig

Monday

Today she put me on her head and showed me to her married friend.

“Do I look more cheerful this way?” she said.

“You look like that old blondie actress who died kind of young,” he said.

“Angie Dickinson?” He laughed.

“Yes, that’s the one.”

Tuesday

She wore me to the grocery store. She had read somewhere that fit widowers hung out in the vegetable isle. She stood there like a bushel of parsley, but no one sniffed her leaves.

Wednesday

She took me to her hair stylist and asked her to trim my fringe.

“This fucking wig is all wrong for me,” she said. “It doesn’t suit the shape of my face.”

The stylist stared at me, lifted me up to her nose rings and sniffed. “Have you chopped a bunch of onions recently?” she asked.

Thursday

“No offspring of mine needs to wear a wig,” her mother was saying to her on the phone. “You gotta experiment with curl cream.”

“My hair is almost gone, Mom,” she said. “It’s stress. But I’m not walking around like this anymore.”

“Nobody needs to live on a silty hillside, or go to their own funeral, or marry a lukewarm man like you did. Or eat burnt chocolate chip cookies for dinner,” her mother added.

They hung up at the same time.

Thursday (later)

Today she wore me to an actual matinee. The man next to us ate popcorn very loudly and made gurgling noises in the back of his throat. We felt our ears fill up with dust. We wanted to find a cure for him. We didn’t know how to help him.

“I wish I had left you at home,” she said.

I wish she had left me home as well. We didn’t know why she had worn me to see a movie alone in the middle of the day.

Friday

After dark we went outside to see if we could spot any real stars. I made her head feel warmer. She told me this in her sweet and silky words.

“You warm me up,” she said, patting me.

Tonight, we hoped for the real show, not last night’s drippy lights from small planes. Stars confuse us, but we worry about it together. These days I find myself worrying about the woman below me, as though I were made of something else.

About Meg Pokrass

Meg Pokrass is the author of seven flash fiction collections, a novella-in-flash, and is the two-time recipient of the Blue LIght Book Award. Her work has been internationally anthologized in two Norton Anthology Readers, Best Small Fictions 2018 and 2019, the Wigleaf Top 50 List, and her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines including Washington Square Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review and Smokelong Quarterly. She currently serves as Flash Challenge Editor at Mslexia Magazine, Festival Curator for Flash Fiction Festival, U.K. (Bristol) Co-Editor of Best Microfiction 2020, and Founding/Managing Editor of New Flash Fiction Review.

Artist Credit:

Brett J Barr is an artist/ tattooist, born in Easton Pennsylvania. He grew up in Daytona Beach, moved to Orlando FL in 1997 and now resides in Orlando, FL. Aside from tattooing at Built 4 Speed Tattoo in Orlando, Brett enjoys many different art forms such as graphite, charcoal, paint, pen and ink, mixed media/ graphic design, woodworking miniatures and studies classical guitar.

Contacts:
brettjbarr@yahoo.com
Facebook/ Brett J Barr
Instagram/ brettjbarrtattoos
Shop Insta/ built4speedtattoos
built4speedtattoos.com/brettjbarr

Footer

From The Blog

Best Small Fictions Nomations

January 21, 2023 By Brett Pribble

The Storming of Rome by Slawka G. Scarso Juicy Fruit by Katie Coleman You Were Only Waiting for This Moment to Arrive by Kathy Fish Eddie by David James Poissant Something Fierce and Unnamed by Tommy Dean

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 · Wellness Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in