Pieces of Our Boy

Kay Rae Chomic

We, five sisters, cut our dead brother’s clothes into six-inch squares for a memory quilt. From Woolworth’s, we stole an extra pair of pinking shears, and four thimbles.

The denim from his jeans made us smile, one pocket’s contents—a four-leaf clover—made us cry.

His flannel jammies smoothed our edges as we cut them into flower shapes.

The stripes and plaids from his shirts we used as borders.

The corduroy, we scratched with our fingernails, and remembered him biting his own and ours.

We laid the quilt on his bed taking intermittent comfort underneath his short life.


This story was the First Prize winner in the April 2021 Monthly Micro Fiction Competition.

About the author: Kay Rae Chomic is a novelist (A Tight Grip), and writer of flash: Ellipsis Zine, Every Day Fiction, Hundred Heroines, Retreat West (shortlisted), LISP (semi-finalist), The Dribble Drabble Review, Storgy Magazine, Crack the Spine, Five:2:One, 50-Word Stories, Writer Advice, Two Sisters Writing, Hysteria 6, The First Line. Kay lives in Seattle dodging raindrops.