"Settle"

Micro by Kathryn Kulpa, Anthologized in Best Microfiction 2025 (Forthcoming July 2025).

Afterward, when you hold a cold washcloth to your face, he’ll apologize. Apologize, like “You don’t know how it was. You didn’t grow up in a circus like that.” A circus like that, and you picture his triple-bypass father, clown-nosed, still barking coarse jokes, his cowed mother, sneak-drinking. Sneak-drinking in the kitchen where you find her, looking for salt. Salt in the wound when she tells you if you could just have a baby it would help. Help him settle. Settle is what you did when you didn’t know better. You didn’t know better, you were young but felt old with dull hair and crooked teeth and the world was an envelope you barely dared to peek out of, but now you do. Now you do, and the car keys are in your purse, the Klonopin is in his drink, and when he asks if you forgive him you say yes. Yes, you say, and you don’t know where you’re going but you know it will be better. Better than a circus like this. 

Kathryn Kulpa was born in Providence, Rhode Island, like H. P. Lovecraft. She writes strange stories, most of them short, and has work in BULL, Flash Frog, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy Review, and other fine journals. Her chapbook FOR EVERY TOWER, A PRINCESS is just released from Porkbelly Press.