It was a mistake to meet you in the woods after school, linger long after we both should have left, feel your lips against mine, tasting of cherries, soft like bruised fruit, my hands tracing the contours of your landscape, so familiar, so strange, so often, then afterwards take the shame of us home, press you between pages of my diary, safe and unrequited, then not to stem the rumours, careless whispers along hushed corridors that shadowed you and distanced me as I saw less and less of you and when I did your eyes were haunted and your locker was graffitied and the cuts on your arms were a language I couldn’t read and your parents were called in by the Headmistress and I should have told them about the woods and the lake where we’d swum but I thought if you were gone, I wouldn’t miss you.
Alison Woodhouse is a writer and creative writing tutor/mentor. Her short fiction has won a number of competitions and many other pieces have been placed or shortlisted and are widely published both in print and online. Her debut Novella in Flash, The House on the Corner, was published in 2020 by Ad Hoc Fiction and her flash fiction collection, Family Frames, in 2021 by V Press. She’s doing a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa and Exeter University, funded by the SWWDTP and is one of the team who organise the Bath Short Story Award. She recently taught creative writing at CityLit and now offers workshops and masterclasses both online and in person at various events, including the annual Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol.
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