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Lauren Kardos
The last time I saw Daisy the Ballerina Black Bear of Allegheny County, before I hopped the four o’clock Missouri Pacific to Omaha, Frank had her in the ring. I had just left his trailer and my right cheek ached. The bathwater breeze tore at the big tent’s door-flap fastenings, though Daisy’s tutu remained unruffled. It was that summer when you could scoop puddles of cicadas with both hands cupped, and the clouds warned I had to leave soon or risk drowning on the way to the trainyard. With sleeves rolled to his elbows and cigarillo dangling from his lips, Frank conducted Daisy’s rehearsal for the evening show. Pirouette. Demi-plié. Arabesque. The gramophone crackled every fifth beat. And I wondered, clutching my worn leather suitcase handle, if the bones of his left hand at least rattled a little looser now. I wondered why I ever let this man orchestrate my life. I wondered in which Podunk newspaper I could one day read Frank’s obituary: Ringleader Mauled by Animal Talent. And Daisy… I took my sister’s recent postcard from my pocket. Greetings from Yellowstone National Park on one side; you’ll love Wyoming, she scrawled on the other. I wondered, in the haven of my sister’s new home, if I might part the pine branches, let the sun tickle my chin whiskers, and find Daisy leaping from boulder to boulder, Old Faithful the only symphony she needed.
Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. Rejection Letters, (mac)ro(mic), Best Microfiction 2022, and The Lumiere Review are just a few of the fine publications that feature her stories and poetry. Lauren lives on Twitter @lkardos.
