• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Nonfiction
    • Contests
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
      • MAYDAY:Black
    • Open Positions
    • Masthead
    • Contributors

Parts I Know
by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

June 6, 2022 Contributed By: Anna Baronsky, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

This story won second place in the MAYDAY 2022 Flash Fiction Contest. 

boots on porch
Sticky Boots, 26 x 40, charcoal, by Anna Baronsky

I can see his whole face. He strolls toward me, grin wide, eyes shaded by blue Bruin cap. 

Minty fresh breath fills my mask. Sweat forms on my upper lip. I adjust my sunglasses to lessen fog, turn away from him, and lift my bike off the rack.

He hurries closer. “Let me help you.”

“Stay back.” The bike bounces on tires between us. “I got it.”

“Seriously?” His smile disappears. “I haven’t seen you for months.” He stretches his arms. “No hug?”

“No mask?” I strap on my helmet, get on my bike, and pedal away.

He pedals faster, catches me before I turn on Westchester Parkway.

I struggle to breathe. “Stay behind me.”

“Why are you tripping? We’re outside.” His tone like the first time we had sex without a condom. 

The last time we had sex. Four months ago. Before the pandemic. Before he left to work on a film in Atlanta. Before two missed periods and a procedure that was none of his business.

I pedal harder, lower the gear to climb the slight incline.

He cruises up next to me like it’s flat ground.

I slow my pace and watch him roll by, sweat line down the middle of his broad back dripping into parts I know. I stop. 

He stops ahead and twists around.

I take off my mask and glasses, pour water on my face. It drips down my purple V-neck tee into parts he knows.

He watches.

I wait. Tighten my helmet, put mask and glasses back in place.

He drinks from his bottle and licks his lips, holds the bottom one in for a second like he does. He takes a mask out his pocket and puts it on. He waits.

I take a deep breath and pedal to meet him.

“I’m back for good,” he says. “I’ll get tested.” He holds his flat palm toward me.

I stretch out my arm, touch my fingertips to his. “And buy some condoms.”

He grins behind his mask. 

I stand up and pedal my hardest to reach the top of the grade before he does.

 


Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, TISHA MARIE REICHLE-AGUILERA (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She is obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and is an Annenberg Fellow at University of Southern California. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit.

ANNA BARONSKY is an artist, UX UI designer, and freelance graphic designer from Manhattan Beach, California. She is a recent graduate of Connecticut College, where she majored in Art and received a certificate of honors from the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology. While attending college she explored her creativity through charcoal and graphite as well as graphic design, data visualization, and augmented reality. Her culminating college thesis, Visualizing Online Activism, investigated “slacktivism” and data gathered from online petitions. Anna currently works full-time as a User Experience and User Interface Designer and part-time as a freelance designer. Her most recent projects include a poster for Manuel the Band for their Joshua Tree concert as well as a truck design for “Hows Your Meat,” a BBQ food truck located in West Roxbury, MA. Her creative process, when working in graphite and charcoal, is best described as meditative and therapeutic—she hopes viewers feel a loving familiarity and nostalgia (with a hint of spookiness) from her work “Boots.” See more of her work here.

Filed Under: Featured Fiction, Fiction Posted On: June 6, 2022

Further Reading

THE DARK VALLEY from Boccaccio’s Eclogues (translated by David R. Slavitt)

X. THE DARK VALLEY   LYCIDAS: Dorilus, poor fellow, it doesn’t seem to matter whether Orion sends rain to the earth, or Amon flowers, or whether the Crab brings crickets to chirp in the heat, or Chiron strips the leaves from the trees, I always see you with your head bent and tears welling up […]

Cinderella Washington DC 2004
by Gabriella M. Belfiglio

There is no stepmother. No weak father who discards me—             The Prince asked, “Haven’t you got another daughter?”             “No,” said the father “there is only a puny little             kitchen drudge that my dead wife left me.             She couldn’t possibly be the bride. And just forget about the prince, right off. Only a woman […]

A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles (reviewed by Terrance Gutberlet)

A MOMENT IN THE SUN by John Sayles McSweeney’s 968 pages reviewed by Terrance Getberlet The Spanish-American war: vehicle for John Sayles’ newest film, Amigo, and his newest novel, A Moment in the Sun. Spreading awareness of the war has become his cause du jour and he’s been seeking answers as to why it figures so dimly in the […]

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • Caterpillar by Dragana Mokan
    translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
  • Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • Inside the Kaleidoscope
    by Jane O. Wayne
  • Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
    translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
  • Sellouts 1970: Love Story: The Year a Screenplay-Turned-Novel Almost Broke the National Book Award
    by Kirk Sever
  • George Saunders on A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
    by Brianna Di Monda
  • I Know Who Orville Peck Is
    by Robin Gow
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.