We’d agreed to never come back to this place yet here we are. The wind whispers through the trees and unsettles our hair, trying to remind us to leave. Why would we return to these woods? “I don’t care…
Where did I write this story, you might wonder. I would like to tell you that I was in the woods, seated at a weathered antique desk in a cabin surrounded by tall trees and fresh air, writing by hand in a notebook, or on a typewriter, or at the very least a trusty old laptop. But the truth is I was at the grocery store when I started hearing a few lines of dialogue between these characters in my head, as well as a phrase or two of narration. I began to envision them walking through the woods together as I listened to them talk. I did the only thing I could do to retain the story quickly forming in my mind—I pulled out my phone, typing as much of it as possible into the Notes app with one hand while pushing my shopping cart with the other.
As we walk through life, we find ourselves carrying the invisible weight of the things that haunt us—the people, places, and events of our past. I think that places sometimes have as powerful a hold on our memories as people, so the settings of my stories often act almost as another character. In this story, we open on a scene in the woods. These woods are introduced as the place to which these two old friends agreed to never return, and yet here they are. Their love for their mutual best friend has brought them here after her death. In stories, people are able to live on after they’re gone, becoming immortal. Like the woods, her ghost is as much a character as these two who would rather be anywhere else, preferably with her still alive alongside them. I love exploring the bonds that tie us to each other so inextricably that even death cannot unravel them. The added layer here is the complexity of long time friendships between girls and women. The lingering question is how these two will preserve their bond without their friend (who was closer to each of them than they are to each other) to keep them together. I am drawn to highlighting these beautifully intense and difficult relationships in my writing, particularly in flash fiction, because capturing even just one moment in time can imply a whole lifetime of memories and possibilities.
I grew up in Pennsylvania where endless amounts of time was spent with friends in diners, farms, and the woods along the Delaware River. At this point, it’s pretty much instinct that guides me to delve into the intricacies of relationships not at the height of some exciting or exceptional moment, but rather during the comfort of old rituals in these familiar settings. Underneath that warm comfort are the hidden tensions and troubled truths of even the longest and strongest friendships. I no longer live there but a piece of my heart can still be found in those woods and with those people. Writing this story helped me to return for a brief flicker of time.
ANNA VANGALA JONES is the author of the short story collection Turmeric & Sugar (Thirty West, 2021). Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Wigleaf; Terrazzo Editions; Berkeley Fiction Review; Short Story, Long; Necessary Fiction; X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine; and AAWW’s The Margins, among others. Her stories have been selected for Longform Fiction’s Best of 2018 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net anthologies. Find her at annavangalajones.com, @anniejowrites.bsky.social on Bluesky, @anniejowrites on Instagram, and @anniejo_17 on Twitter.
