Sometimes sudden fiction blurs the line between the short short story and poetry. Walking Upside Down, John Ravenscroft’s previous winner of the Storycove Flash Fiction Award, is one such piece. Personally, I think this would read better as a long poem than a flash fiction story, but no matter how it’s presented, there’s no denying it’s a fantastic piece of writing. It starts out:
“In my dreams, the good ones, Mary Iris McCormack – Mim for short – is forever doing handstands, her knees bent, her feet planted flat against the redbrick playground wall. The skirt of her school uniform hangs like a soft green bell about the half-hidden clapper of her head, and when she turns to face me I see strange, knowing, upside-down eyes…”
You can read the flash fiction story “Walking Upside Down” in its entirety at the online literary journal, Word Smitten.
So what do you think? Is it a story or is it a poem?
A Bunch of Wordz 