100th Birthday Party

I’ve climbed the rungs and arrived at 100 years, sharp as an ice pick and ready to boogie. I rent a party bus to Venus, planet of love, cause what rises up round my spidery limbs and stooped back are the people I love. So we buckle in and ride through the slick Milky Way. My father’s in the backseat crowned with black curls like a young rooster, swigging tequila next to Mom, alive here, her particles vacuumed from her urn and reassembled, edgy and shocked like her 80s hair. She’s holding his hand tight-– to keep him close, to keep him from hitting. Then my childhood besties who swam creeks and chased crawdads with me, plus later friends who called me Snake Lips, for my smart mouth. A few boys behind them, side-by-side, their bodies young and willing. Then my baby girl before harm befell her, holding fast to Naked Dolly‘s cloth arm, Herself-as-a-Woman is her seat mate– looking something like me, but Middle Eastern and beautiful. My greatest love glows in the seat behind me wearing his midnight blue shirt, then me at the wheel, giant silver hearts pierced through my lobes, glinting at starlight. Whipping round comets, not one of us carsick, my box of regrets sliding up and down the aisle. I croon, “We’re almost there, loves,” and I crank up the Elvis, roll down the window, turn up the air conditioner.

Nicole Brogdon

Nicole Brogdon is an Austin TX trauma therapist interested in strugglers and stories, fiction in Vestal Review, Cleaver, Flash Frontier, Bending Genres, Bright Flash, SoFloPoJo, Cafe Irreal, 101Words, Centifictionist, etc. Best Microfiction 2024; Best Microfiction 2025. Long ago, she earned a Masters in Writing @U of Houston. Twitter NBrogdonWrites! & nbrogdonwrites.bsky.social.