Mr. Chavez stands in front of the classroom and talks about peas. Green peas, yellow peas, wrinkled peas, smooth-as-Mr. Chavez’s-bald head peas. He says when two different varieties are sown together under a blanket of dark, loamy soil, they sometimes yield plants with pods containing green and wrinkled peas or yellow and smooth or maybe they’ll come out the same shade of chartreuse as the faded bridesmaid’s dress hidden in the back of your mother’s closet, the one she wore the night she met your father and got drunk on wild dandelion wine for the first time and conceived you, although she’ll never in a million years say so. You can tell just fine by the way her fingers wrap themselves around the hanger as she keeps shoving it further and further back until it’s pressed tight against the wall.
Kristin Tenor finds inspiration in life's quiet details and believes in their power to illuminate the extraordinary. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including The Midwest Review, Milk Candy Review, Bending Genres, Emerge Literary Journal, among others. A Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions and Pushcart Prize nominee, Kristin also serves as the flash fiction editor at CRAFT. Find more at www.kristintenor.com or follow her on Twitter @KristinTenor.
Art by Bob Schofield @anothertower