"What will happen to memories when The Cloud bursts" by Tom Walsh

The photos sparkle as they fall, the birthday candles and wedding cakes and fireworks and nightclubs and rainbows. I scoop a baby shower from a bench and it breaks apart in my fingers, a puff of glitter, fluttering to the ground like autumn. I catch memories in my palm, a child blowing out ten candles, a skydiver stepping from a plane, an old man napping in a chair by a fireplace, a cat nestled next to him in a cardboard box lined with a red sweater. I poke the cat and it pops like a cartoon balloon, a calico explosion of color. I find footballers and skiers and gymnasts; people walking and running and standing still in front of gardens and cathedrals and beaches, where waves break on the sand and they surf and swim and build sandcastles; selfies of eyeballs and nose hairs and smiles in front of the Eiffel Tower at dawn, at sunset, lit up in the middle of the night; families with dogs and cats and horses in stables and at racing tracks and in the mountains of Montana, with trophy elk and cutthroat trout, and glaciers in full retreat. A burst of 500 photos from a rodeo stampedes me, ending with a cowboy in the dirt and a bull in the air, but when I touch it, the horns collapse. Darker images fall, too, things hidden in the Cloud’s blackest linings. Abuse, shame, beatings, body parts, betrayals–these moan when touched. People swarm from office buildings, looking skyward like they did on 9/11. No one speaks as the Cloud bursts. Children kick at them, giggling at the tiny snap as each one disappears.

Tom Walsh writes and edits these days from Cambridge, MA. His flash fiction can be found in Janus Literary, Hobart Pulp, HAD, Lost Balloons, and elsewhere. He is an assistant editor at Flash Fiction Online.