Carolyn R. Russell

Short Fiction

I gamble on a new day in the cold diaphanous dawn while my namesake, many crooked borders away, waits on consignment for proper prayers on his behalf. I think there are none, sacred or otherwise, that can really get the job done, nothing between him and that arbitrary draw. One cockeyed spin and you’re out. But I shovel snow, crack ice, and make the soup my grandparents lived on. Despite my heathen heart, I’m all in, too in awe of the roundelay to not keep spinning. So I wait for sunrise tomatoes to seam along the branching violet veins that map and serrate this world. Small brilliances will audit even the most bloodstained boundaries to paint new greenery gold, the way forward radiant and ripe with odds we can carry and hymns we can mend.

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A Best Microfiction winner and Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions nominee, Carolyn R. Russell’s short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been featured in numerous publications. She has also authored four books, including a multi-genre flash collection called “Death and Other Survival Strategies” (Vine Leaves Press, 2023). Carolyn lives on and writes from Boston’s North Shore.