The Shape of Us

A summer stretched too long. Barren hours
splinter under our feet. Jet streams

make a crossword puzzle. Bored weathermen fill the grid
with clear skies. There is no water for grass to grow.

Celebrities bury their DNA on the moon, blue
like ours. Light years away, the rings

of Saturn disintegrate deep oceans into dark matter.
I hear you sleep talk—calling time

a traitor, always leaving us dry. On a hot, bright day,
we go for a swim and sing Star Wars. Urge

each other to fly.

Tara Isabel Zambrano works as a semiconductor chip designer. Her work has been published in Tin House Online, The Southampton Review, Slice, Bat City Review, Yemassee, Passages North, and others. She is assistant flash fiction Editor at Newfound.org. Tara moved from India to the United States two decades ago and holds an instrument rating for single engine aircraft. She lives in Texas.

The genre2 interview

What is your preferred genre and why?

Flash fiction because that's how I think, framing sentences from images, unraveling a story. It's fun, challenging, and deeply satisfying to convey a human condition in a few words.

Why did this piece compel you to move to this alternative genre?

I used to write poetry before I started writing flash. I came back to it so my flash fiction is sharper, cleaner. Writing a poem, to me, is more of a cerebral labor than fiction is. It make me think/see things, characters, the universe in a focused light.

What challenges or surprises did you encounter while working in this genre?

Getting the rhythm and the structure right. The sharp, stinging details. The need of expression rather than arriving at a conclusion. Reading it ten days later, and feeling the shiver down the spine.