Luke Wortley
Sunflower
|
There were mass blackouts across the state. Rolling waves of loss, lights out. The rain came down with abandon, the river rising. We couldn’t charge our phones, but my father called for the first time in nearly five years. I saw the word Dad flash on the screen, felt my stomach turn, the lilting waves of resistance starting to pinpoint themselves in my fingers. And yet there was a stooping desire to answer, to see what he wanted. We’d recently had a kid, and it was hard. Two weeks in the NICU and endless stretches of worrying about breath. Our son had been home for three weeks before my father finally called, and it was in the middle of this storm. It went to voicemail. The storm careened through the blotchy sky above, and I sat there watching the battery drain, watching the rivulets rise in the street. Eventually, the storm died, too, and the power came flickering on like a toe tap. I looked at my phone to see the screen cracked, a single sunflower blooming stupidly in the night. I plucked the stem from my screen and gave it to my wife, who laid it next to our son in the crib.
|
Biography
|
Luke Wortley is a writer living in Indianapolis, Indiana. His fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in monkeybicycle, Hobart, Best Microfictions, Pithead Chapel, The Florida Review, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. He also has a chapbook entitled PURGE coming out later this year (2022) that centers on disordered eating, male bodies, body dysmorphia, and the intersection of those things with closeted bisexuality. You can follow him on Twitter (@LukeWortley) or visit https://www.lukewortley.com/
|
