FOURTH PRIZE
BY SASHA DROTENKO
PHOTO BY BURAK THE WEEKENDER
Tonight, I iron my mother’s clothes. The television hums. A woman with Hollywood hair wailing about her inattentive blue collar husband is my companion for the night. Tonight, I begin with her blouse. My hands tremor as I touch the familiar delicate blue. I switch to the coolest setting. I know she would see the slightest singe. The creases fade. I fold the now warm material.
Tonight, I find what my mother used to wear on our vacations: a black and white tank top, splattered with abstracted faces. I laugh. She will only wear that now for temperature regulation in the summer. I watch the faces squash and stretch as I manipulate heat. I remember this shirt, with nostalgia for camcorder memories melded with a child’s fear of disapproval.
Tonight, I recall my mother’s salmon pink wedding garb: pink blouse, pink pants, and a pink hat half the size of the ironing board. In my mother’s wedding photos, she looks like me in a way that makes me want to cry. I remember when she gave me her pink hat to play dress-up, wondering if she felt the same then. The heat burns my hands as I lose myself in lament, never able to meet the girl she was. Looking at this girl who got married in pink pants and flew across the world is looking in a mirror. Looking at my mother is looking through a window fogged by iron steam. Tonight, I cry with Mrs. Hollywood Hair.
Sasha Drotenko’s, Tonight, placed fourth in the BCPW’s Flash Fiction Contest. Drotenko attends Richmond Hill High School in Richmond Hill, ON.