{"id":2622,"date":"2023-07-21T16:37:08","date_gmt":"2023-07-21T20:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2622"},"modified":"2023-07-21T16:37:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-21T20:37:08","slug":"brick-by-brick","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2622","title":{"rendered":"Brick by Brick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amy Lyons<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Issue 16<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Flash Fiction<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m exhausted all the time since giving birth and if I don\u2019t get help soon I might disappear. My baby is light and I don\u2019t want her to disappear with me, so I weigh down her carriage with bricks when we walk the vacant beach. The bricks are red, just like you\u2019d think a brick would be, and the baby is pink, just like a baby. The beach has sand and ocean and empty beer cans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day, my baby reaches over and grabs one of the bricks. She holds it up over her head and I can\u2019t believe her strength. How is my baby fitting her pudgy little baby hands around this brick? This brick could crush her skull if it slipped out of her baby hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBaby,\u201d I say to my baby, whose name I won\u2019t reveal for privacy reasons. My baby deserves privacy and I deserve privacy, but we don\u2019t get much privacy because I am Mom and must always be with my baby and my baby is a baby, who, if given too much privacy might disappear. \u201cPut down that brick. It is not a toy. It is there to weigh down the carriage, so it doesn\u2019t just float away.\u201d My baby drops the brick over the edge of the carriage and it lands on my foot. Hits my foot on purpose, I might add. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My baby has crippled me. Ever since this baby came, I can\u2019t sleep, can\u2019t do my job, can\u2019t even get myself dressed in the morning without three cups of black coffee. The baby\u2019s father is no help. He goes to work and holds the baby for fifteen minutes so I can scarf down dinner. And now this, a broken foot. As if a carriage full of bricks and a baby were not hard enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My baby gets out of the baby carriage and stands over me. \u201cMom,\u201d my baby says, \u201cI don\u2019t need these bricks. I am not as light as you think. I am substantial.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I crawl inside the carriage and my baby takes me home. My foot throbs, but the pain is worth the thing I\u2019ve learned. That my baby is quite strong. She can push a carriage full of bricks and full of me. There are two kinds of mothers in the world, good and bad, but maybe my baby, my strong, violent, difficult baby, doesn\u2019t see it quite that way. Babies know things mothers have forgotten. I feel something growing inside me, something like a sacred truth. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Amy Lyons<\/strong> has had work published in several places, including Autofocus<\/em>, Rejection Letters<\/em>, Waxwing<\/em>, Prime Number<\/em>, HAD<\/em>, Flash Frog<\/em>, BULL<\/em>, Literary Mama<\/em>, No Contact<\/em>, Lunch Ticket<\/em>, Schuylkill Valley Journal<\/em>, FRiGG<\/em>, and Best Microfiction 2022<\/em>. She\u2019s an alum of Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony, and Tin House. She holds an MFA from Bennington.
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\"\"<\/a>
Read “Gifts for Men<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Read “A Hundred Ways…<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Read “Big Dairy Called…<\/a>“<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Amy Lyons Issue 16 Flash Fiction I\u2019m exhausted all the time since giving birth and if I don\u2019t get help soon I might disappear. My baby is light and I don\u2019t want her to disappear with me, so I weigh down her carriage with bricks when we walk the vacant beach. The bricks are red, just like you\u2019d think a brick would be, and the baby is pink, just like a baby. The beach has sand and ocean and empty beer cans.  One day, my baby reaches over and grabs one of the bricks. She holds it up over her head and I can\u2019t believe her strength. How is my baby fitting her pudgy little baby hands around this brick? This brick could crush her skull if it slipped out of her baby hands.  \u201cBaby,\u201d I say to my baby, whose name I won\u2019t reveal for privacy reasons. My baby deserves privacy and I deserve privacy, but we don\u2019t get much privacy because I am Mom and must always be with my baby and my baby is a baby, who, if given too much privacy might disappear. \u201cPut down that brick. It is not a toy. It is there to weigh down the carriage, so it doesn\u2019t just float away.\u201d My baby drops the brick over the edge of the carriage and it lands on my foot. Hits my foot on purpose, I might add.  My baby has crippled me. Ever since this baby came, I can\u2019t sleep, can\u2019t do my job, can\u2019t even get myself dressed in the morning without three cups of black coffee. The baby\u2019s father is no help. He goes to work and holds the baby for fifteen minutes so I can scarf down dinner. And now this, a broken foot. As if a carriage full of bricks and a baby were not hard enough.\u00a0 My baby gets out of the baby carriage and stands over me. \u201cMom,\u201d my baby says, \u201cI don\u2019t need these bricks. I am not as light as you think. I am substantial.\u201d I crawl inside the carriage and my baby takes me home. My foot throbs, but the pain is worth the thing I\u2019ve learned. That my baby is quite strong. She can push a carriage full of bricks and full of me. There are two kinds of mothers in the world, good and bad, but maybe my baby, my strong, violent, difficult baby, doesn\u2019t see it quite that way. Babies know things mothers have forgotten. I feel something growing inside me, something like a sacred truth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2622","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}