Slawka G. Scarso

Short stories, poems and the odd travel note // Racconti, poesie, e qualche appunto di viaggio

Stromboli by Night

Flash, Published fiction

Stromboli by Night

I wrote this piece following one of the prompts from the Flash Fiction Festival in 2021. It was selected a few months later for a special Zine published by The Madison Review in partnership with The Berkeley Fiction Review. You can find it on pages 16-17. Here is how it begins.

Stromboli by Night

As we leave the village, headlamps pointing at the ground in front of us, I can smell broom. Even in the darkness, I can picture it: yellow and thick, the way children paint the sun. But I don’t mention it to you.

The slope is gentle, at first, the path clean, and I sense delicate, ephemeral caper flowers, and wild fennel. But I don’t make you notice, like I usually would. As we move on the uneven path, carved on the sides of Stromboli’s crater, I don’t tell you to mind your step […]

Continue reading.

Photo by Petr Slováček on Unsplash

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *