Boiling Point by Bethany Bruno

Image by Michal Balog on Unsplash

​The burner won’t light.

​She presses the knob, waits for the faint click-click-click, but nothing catches. Just the stale scent of gas. She clicks it off, clicks it back. Nothing.

​The pot is already filled. Tap water. Slightly cloudy. Half a box of store-brand pasta waits beside it like a promise she can’t quite keep.

In the other room, her son arranges plastic soldiers into battle lines. They’re hand-me-downs from a neighbor, chipped and faded. She can hear him narrating the fight in whispers.

She clicks the burner again. Nothing.

The past week plays on a loop behind her eyes. The pale pink notice folded into the mailbox. The manager’s voice, all polite dread, saying “just one more week.” The food bank closed for inventory. The freezer humming its empty hum. The bruises on her paycheck—hours cut again. She presses the knob harder, as if force will conjure flame.

She tries the back burner. A hiss. A faint spark. Then nothing.

Her stomach growls and it embarrasses her. She hasn’t eaten since yesterday’s coffee. She keeps thinking about her mother’s kitchen, the one with the yellow walls and the burnt linoleum. Her mother would stand over the stove in her robe, boiling water for rice, chain-smoking, humming along to the radio. When they had food, they cooked. When they didn’t, they made noise so the hunger had company.

She never wanted this for him.

She opens the window. Gas worries her more than hunger. The night air slips in, heavy and wet with Alabama heat. A mosquito hums by her ear. The window screen has a tear in it. She meant to fix it last summer.

From the living room:
“Mom? Is dinner ready?”
“Almost,” she says, too fast.

She crouches beside the cabinet and rifles through it. A dusty jar of peanut butter. A box of crackers, mostly crumbs. A can of peaches with no label and a dent in its side. She turns the can in her hand like it might give her a better answer if she holds it long enough.

In the drawer, she finds matches.

Her hands shake as she strikes one. The flame jumps, bright and sudden. She leans in and turns the knob again. A whoosh. The burner lights.

She exhales.

She sets the pot on the flame and watches the water begin to shift. A few lazy bubbles rise to the surface, then vanish. Not a boil yet. Just motion.

She leans against the counter, her arms wrapped around herself, as if holding her ribs will keep everything else in place. The flame flickers blue and steady beneath the pot. It’s something. It’s enough.

The boy appears in the doorway holding a green soldier with a missing leg.

“Can I have some crackers?”
“Pasta’s almost ready.”
“I’m really hungry.”
“I know, baby.” She crouches to meet his eyes. “Can you wait ten minutes?”
He thinks about it. Then nods.

She watches him walk back to his battlefield, one sock falling down. His shoulder blades sharp under his shirt. He doesn’t know about the envelope on the table. The one that says “Final Notice.” He doesn’t know she skipped lunch so he could have seconds. He only knows the flame is on now. That the water will boil. That dinner is coming.

She stirs the pot with the same wooden spoon her mother once used. The handle is worn smooth from years of circling broth, scraping sauce, coaxing something from nothing. She stirs like it matters. Like it always did.

The water boils, loud and rolling.

She tips in the pasta.​

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Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author and amateur historian. Born in Hollywood and raised in Port St. Lucie, she holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her work has appeared in more than ninety literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, McSweeney’s, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Brevity, and The Huffington Post. A Best of the Net nominee, she won 2025 flash fiction contests from Inscape Journal and Blue Earth Review and was a finalist in the 2026 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. ​Learn more at: www.bethanybrunowriter.com