Our topiarist is known for collecting broken umbrellas. Her house is full of blank-paged books. Pruning shears. Frames without pictures. Every fork is bent & she likes it that way. By now, you should know she’s our protagonist. Our confidant. Our collector of refrigerator magnets. Garden Girl has a clandestine sense of humor. How else can one explain removing every battery from every clock & telling nobody. Watching every wire unspring itself as the power source is removed. Snapshotting that minuscule expelling of tension with a lengthy stare to recreate on a shrub someday. That release of impact. Metal prongs holding nothing. She gets it.  No Triple-A’s. No nylon fabric. We’re green animals, all of us, she’ll ramble into a shoulder-tucked phone whilst sipping a peanut butter milkshake. A radio will tell her the sleet has been called off again. Too warm. Instead, it will rain. Garden Girl will make nothing. Outside of her home, an elephant bows. The bay laurels await shaping. There might be scenes in the condensation, but only if you look long enough. It’s getting harder to see now. The overgrowth has taken every last one of us.

About Hannah Cajandig-Taylor

Hannah Cajandig-Taylor (she/her) is a poet and flash writer residing in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She's the author of ROMANTIC PORTRAIT OF A NATURAL DISASTER (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and has published work in Pidgeonholes, Milk Candy Review, and Gigantic Sequins, among others. She's been nominated for some stuff and once had a piece featured in Wigleaf's Top 50. She thinks that grapes taste better frozen and has strong feelings about umbrellas.

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collectors flash fiction short fiction whimsical