She chipped a tooth.  It was barely even noticeable, just a tiny dent in the edge of her front left central incisor, completely invisible to the naked eye.  Still, her tongue couldn’t help to explore the violation, smoothing over the rough dip in the otherwise pristine edge of the enamel as if trying to strike a cut to its curious fleshy papillae covered surface, to coax blood forth from the overzealous scrape as further proof of her strife, having to spend the whole of her lifetime to that point lost within his shadow.  But there was no such transgression to bear a pang of pain to warrant an abrupt word and she was still irrelevant and invisible – just a mouse that dared not voice so much as a peep.

She looked down at her plate.  The lettuce wilted back at her, soggy and dripping with balsamic dressing.  The jagged green arugula loomed menacingly, its lacy spun glass landscape seemingly threatening to lacerate her esophagus like those words that had long ago choked out her own voice…  “You’re not good enough.”  Two cucumber eyes stared, cold and calculating, judging her every move.  An overripe avocado slice smiled slyly from the mix, graying rapidly despite the acidic tang of the vinegary liquid staving off the worst of its putrefaction.  The zombie fruit slumped, ready to either be eaten or rot away.  She poked at it with the crooked tine of her metal fork, and it relinquished its form to mush while still silently smirking at her.

All she could see was his condescending face in the casket, his eyes shuddered from light and life, his flesh a pallid waxy form folded over a void in time and space, skin stretched taut.  Despite his rigidity, he bore an eerie resemblance to the avocado, himself bearing a slightly drooping misplaced grin.  Even as he lay in stillness, she could sense his barbed tongue hidden within his clenched jaw just waiting to cut her down to size.  Despite death’s grasp, he appeared all too ready to throw her either to the wolves or under the bus, and she was again aware of how much of a disappointment she had been from the moment of her birth, and even now after his death.

Her tongue ran over the perimeter of her tooth once more, and her gaze returned to her plate.  The salad was itself too unassuming, too demure, too gentle.  But she supposed that should have been expected, since it seemed to reflect her own life back at her, always trying to make amends, never causing a scene, soft and willing, easy…  Besides, she herself had made all of these arrangements in his honor, as was expected.  She had one final opportunity to prove her worth, and she had botched even that up.  This was just another scrap of proof of her inability to carry out everything to his high standards, further validation of her own worthlessness.

Even in death, there were nothing but stones between them, here at the end when their friction should have dissolved to softness and empathy like avocado mush, after the wake and the funeral and the luncheon.  His sendoff was secure, but her chipped tooth still served as a reminder of her shortcomings, her inability to ever meet his expectations.  She ran her tongue over the transgression again, and smiled.

About the author:

Part of our Winter 2026 Issue. New stories, poems, and essays now through February 28, 2026.

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