LET THE SUN GO DOWN

(I did say that I would let my words on this blog do their own talking and what I meant by that was that I would hang more flash fiction pieces here, things that just come out of me and might be worth something. And then someone tells me about this site where I can get pictures for free and so I have this sun-going-down picture to go with the flash.)

LET IT GO

That’s what someone said to him: ‘Let it go.’

And he would if he could. He’d give her the last word, if it meant there’d be an end to things. To words thrown sharp as stones. To pins stuck in his back. To lies written on scraps of paper and tacked to his coat-tails. He’d stay quiet, if it could bring an end to all that.

For long enough he had. He pulled a zipper across his lips and kept his peace. Even when there was more that could be said. Even when he knew she’d gone behind his back and tried to poison the minds of others against him and he’d a job to do to make it all right with the world because of what she’d done.

He’d said he was sorry, once he had, for there was a hurt that he’d made and he’d take that back if he could. But there was other stuff he couldn’t take back and he wouldn’t and that’s why it had gone on for as long as it had.

Then someone said to let it go. That it was wasn’t worth the digging over and the unpicking and the bad taste it left in the mouth afterwards. ‘Let it go,’ someone said and so he thought he should. After all, it was such a long time ago, and he’d only just managed to put it behind him, thought he had.

Then, quite out of the blue, she takes a stick and stirs the pot to boiling again. And she’s a good enough cook, and she knows the right ingredients to put in that pot-boiling dish, and it is hard not to think of the witches in that play with their eye of newt and toe of frog, and the deception they work on the unsuspecting thane.

And ‘Let it go’ the someone says again, and ‘let it go’ is a voice in his head, and ‘hold your tongue’, and ‘do not rise to the bait’, and ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ – even if they seem to be stirring in their sleep – another stirring.

And he thinks of all that the someone says and he turns over in his head the rights and the wrongs, and he comes to a decision then and ‘Letting it go’ is perhaps the best that he can do. So he gives her the last word and even if it is another lie, he lets it stand.