Runner-up: FemFlash 2011

It's time to grab a coffee or a china cup's worth of fine tea, settle down in a horsehair-padded armchair and read the ten shortlisted entries for FEMINIST FLASH 2011. Feminist poetry and flash fiction at its finest.

HEELS

by A. L. Michael

She loved the fifties. Polka dot dresses, black eyeliner. She loved red high heels that punished her as she walked. She liked the click clack noise. It made her feel powerful.

He liked her to wear the heels to bed. She agreed. She felt desired.

Now, she wears them in the kitchen. They clack as she walks to the door, his martini in hand. She wears polka dot dresses whilst preparing his dinner. Flutters her black-lined lashes as she asks about his day and never gets asked about hers. She tries not to think about how much her feet will hurt at work tomorrow.

She wonders if it's her fault, for loving the fifties. If the first night she cooked for him, the first night she waited up for him, the first night she cancelled on her friends to spend time with him was the beginning of the end. If it's her fault that her friends keep trying to remind her how powerful she once was, how brightly she shone.

She used to feel invincible, in those bright red heels. But they don't look so shiny anymore.

First appeared here in A Journey to Publication.