Because he’d be upset if I didn’t save the right suits, but I couldn’t remember if his Kiton or Kired suits were the luxury ones. Because the twins’ favorite toys— legos and a train set—were scattered about and there was no time to gather them. Because although the sky was orange and the air smoky, I couldn’t see flames yet. Because the baby needed feeding and my nipples were cracked and bleeding and there was never enough time for warm compresses and lanolin. Because my mother-in-law’s dark oil landscapes my husband’s first edition Hemingways his collection of antique surgical instruments. Because singed pages of books hadn’t yet drifted from the sky into the children’s sandbox. Because Sunny, the standing human skeleton from medical school was too bulky to pack and when my husband and I argued he thought it was funny to bring her out and make her talk shit to me. Because embers and hand-sized ash flakes hadn’t yet fallen from the sky. Because once I got the twins and the baby and our bunny Sacha and our two cats in the car, maybe. Maybe I wanted everything else to burn.

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Claudia Monpere was just awarded the Smokelong Workshop Prize and her flash appears or is forthcoming in many literary magazines, including Craft, The Forge, Trampset, Fictive Dream, and Atticus Review.