{"id":2733,"date":"2023-07-22T22:03:52","date_gmt":"2023-07-23T02:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2733"},"modified":"2023-07-22T22:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T02:03:52","slug":"the-half-melted-ones","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/?page_id=2733","title":{"rendered":"The Half-melted Ones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Michael Bose<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issue 16<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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

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The thing about ice cream is that it\u2019s best when it\u2019s hard. I\u2019m talking near-frozen, struggling to get your spoon through the tub kind of hard. I want to bite down and feel some crunch in the fake Oreo bits, you hear me? I want to freeze my tongue off. Miss me with that soft, can\u2019t-tell-one-flavor-from-another melted goop. Give me clarity in vanilla and caramel. Give me hard, delineated lines and crisp crunches. I want to crack my teeth on the truffles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time I melted was at the foosball table. Ah, to be ten again. Me and my boys, reigning champions of the game room, sweaty and sugar high. There we were, with half a dozen half-melted ice creams in scattered bowls all but forgotten as I showed off my mediocre skills on the sticks. I boasted in the stupid way only a ten-year-old could, all to impress the little young miss with the golden hair and blue eyes that scooped me up and melted me, swirling out my emotions and twisting them into murky flavors that tasted greater than any cookies and cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was wondering if I could take you on a date,\u201d I said, with a lot more stuttering and a lot more sweat under the dying summer sun than I anticipated in my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I meant to say, ten and terrified, was, \u201cI think I love you,\u201d and \u201cLord, you\u2019re beautiful,\u201d and \u201cYou have the voice of an angel,\u201d as she twirled a lock of shimmer-silk blonde around her artist\u2019s fingers and favored me with a nervous, sad smile. I knew what her answer was before she even opened her mouth, my melted heart congealing into a mushy brown sludge, aching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I keep thinking about her smile, sadder now, thirteen years later. She doesn\u2019t sing anymore. Not after the doctors cobbled together the pieces of her mind like ripping weeds out of a garden, joys as shattered roots and apathy as the pesticide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hope she found her happiness again. If only it was so easy as to stand in line and place an order, adding serotonin to the hindbrain like sprinkles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we can\u2019t. And a half-melted soul is easier to hide than it is to fix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, we mask ourselves in layers, heart-frozen men and candy-faced women, passing out pin-striped lies like truffles, saying, \u201cI\u2019m good,\u201d when you\u2019re really drowning. Saying, \u201cThe weather\u2019s nice today,\u201d when your marriage is falling apart and your job is on the line and the stupid freezer breaks down, wasting three months\u2019 worth of food. Saying \u201cEh, I can\u2019t complain,\u201d when my brothers joke about jamming a shotgun down their throats as if it\u2019s just an \u201cOopsies, spilled some ice cream on my shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where is the joy we once had?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many of us are melted ice cream bowls, forgotten, set out in the world to rot unseen. Innocence, like caramel, congeals into hard, hidden grief. Relationships crumble like Oreo bits, and all the lies we tell crystallize on our souls like hardened fudge, until one day we wake up, directionless. We stare into a mirror and a half-melted stranger stares back, saying, \u201cWhere did it all go wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Michael Bose<\/strong> spent his childhood building elaborate stories full of ninjas and space wizards with his small lego collection. A true exemplar of education, Michael was often found rushing through his classwork to curl up in the back of the classroom and read. Thankfully, he grew out of that habit, and is now fresh out of college with a bachelor\u2019s degree in English, working two day jobs to pay the bills while writing hard to get into Masters programs. When he\u2019s not doing that, some say that he can be found lounging on his back porch in the suburbs of South Carolina, working on his novel and a dozen other side projects, scribbling tall tales of steampunk cities, mystical martial artists, and all things weird and majestical.\u00a0
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<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Read “Death Roll”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Read “Le mot medical juste”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Read “Ancestry”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Bose Issue 16 Flash Fiction The thing about ice cream is that it\u2019s best when it\u2019s hard. I\u2019m talking near-frozen, struggling to get your spoon through the tub kind of hard. I want to bite down and feel some crunch in the fake Oreo bits, you hear me? I want to freeze my tongue off. Miss me with that soft, can\u2019t-tell-one-flavor-from-another melted goop. Give me clarity in vanilla and caramel. Give me hard, delineated lines and crisp crunches. I want to crack my teeth on the truffles. The first time I melted was at the foosball table. Ah, to be ten again. Me and my boys, reigning champions of the game room, sweaty and sugar high. There we were, with half a dozen half-melted ice creams in scattered bowls all but forgotten as I showed off my mediocre skills on the sticks. I boasted in the stupid way only a ten-year-old could, all to impress the little young miss with the golden hair and blue eyes that scooped me up and melted me, swirling out my emotions and twisting them into murky flavors that tasted greater than any cookies and cream. \u201cI was wondering if I could take you on a date,\u201d I said, with a lot more stuttering and a lot more sweat under the dying summer sun than I anticipated in my head. What I meant to say, ten and terrified, was, \u201cI think I love you,\u201d and \u201cLord, you\u2019re beautiful,\u201d and \u201cYou have the voice of an angel,\u201d as she twirled a lock of shimmer-silk blonde around her artist\u2019s fingers and favored me with a nervous, sad smile. I knew what her answer was before she even opened her mouth, my melted heart congealing into a mushy brown sludge, aching. I keep thinking about her smile, sadder now, thirteen years later. She doesn\u2019t sing anymore. Not after the doctors cobbled together the pieces of her mind like ripping weeds out of a garden, joys as shattered roots and apathy as the pesticide. I hope she found her happiness again. If only it was so easy as to stand in line and place an order, adding serotonin to the hindbrain like sprinkles. But we can\u2019t. And a half-melted soul is easier to hide than it is to fix. Instead, we mask ourselves in layers, heart-frozen men and candy-faced women, passing out pin-striped lies like truffles, saying, \u201cI\u2019m good,\u201d when you\u2019re really drowning. Saying, \u201cThe weather\u2019s nice today,\u201d when your marriage is falling apart and your job is on the line and the stupid freezer breaks down, wasting three months\u2019 worth of food. Saying \u201cEh, I can\u2019t complain,\u201d when my brothers joke about jamming a shotgun down their throats as if it\u2019s just an \u201cOopsies, spilled some ice cream on my shirt.\u201d Where is the joy we once had? So many of us are melted ice cream bowls, forgotten, set out in the world to rot unseen. Innocence, like caramel, congeals into hard, hidden grief. Relationships crumble like Oreo bits, and all the lies we tell crystallize on our souls like hardened fudge, until one day we wake up, directionless. We stare into a mirror and a half-melted stranger stares back, saying, \u201cWhere did it all go wrong?\u201d<\/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-2733","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2733","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=2733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepetigrureview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}