What My Father Was Doing When He Learned That I Existed by Shoshauna Shy

Hopping onto the Dakota B bus as he read a text after a chemistry exam, and the woman he considered a one-night-stand was asking him to meet her at Planned Parenthood

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Packing for a fishing trip with his buddies when his girlfriend showed up with a three-page letter she received in the mail from his ex-fiancée

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Drinking a toast to his bride in a reception hall when my mother appeared in the doorway, stomach round as a beach ball

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Decorating a Christmas tree when the TV cut to a breaking story on the local news about a baby left in a bicycle basket outside the fire station, which reminded him of an ultimatum he got last spring, and so he does the math

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Pushing his six-year-old twins on swings while scrolling through an email from a cousin asking didn’t he date a Sarah-What’s-Her-Name at Cane Ridge High? Well, the reason she left for Iowa early senior year…

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Arguing with his eldest sister in a law office over their parents’ estate which included a bequest to some grandchild he’d never heard of

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Fanning himself with a program while seated in midday heat at his grandson’s college commencement when a semi-familiar woman sidles up and introduces herself, points me out across the lawn

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Shoshauna Shy resides in Madison, Wisconsin, a freelance copy editor and flash fiction author and poet whose stories have recently appeared in the public arena courtesy of Five on the Fifth, BigCityLit, 50 Give or Take, Brilliant Flash Fiction and Ariel Chart. One of her flash was included in the Best Microfiction 2021 series by Pelekinesis Press, and she was also one of the seven finalists for the 2021 Fish Flash Fiction Prize out of County Cork, Ireland. Learn more at: https://PoetryJumpsOfftheShelf.com

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