Eileen Frankel Tomarchio

Eileen Frankel Tomarchio works as librarian in a small NJ suburb. Her writing appears in Longleaf Review, Pigeon Pages, Barrelhouse online, and is longlisted in the 2020 SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. She holds an MFA from NYU Film. You can find her on Twitter at @eileentomarchio and Instagram at @gondaline26

A WEB, A TREE by Eileen Tomarchio

Up close, they were groves, nebulae, Medusa’s head of snakes. Two ragged thatches, one on each of my mother’s outer thighs, a Rorschach pair. Seen in full only when I lifted her covers as she snored and lay beside her. By day, she had her ways of hiding them, fooling the eye. Let-out hems lengthened with ribbon, ricrac, lace. Concealer sticks and opaque hose in rainbows of flesh tones. Napkins over-draped on her lap at barbeques. Napkins that slid off after too many daiquiris like a magician’s reveal, my mother’s cue to rise by an invisible thread and tango with…

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