Danielle Barr

“Life, Like” by Danielle Barr

Submitted to Contest #243

Defiant, I dive deeper into delicious oblivion, even as the mist of sleep begins to part, my conscious brain pulling me, unwilling, toward the surface of another gloomy daybreak, Helga Storborg’s bright, chirruping voice slicing through the feathered edges of sleep.“Those angry clouds from the past few days are gonna move on out, and we’re expecting some absolutely beautiful skies this afternoon, Ron.” Defeated, my right eye creaks open, just enough to see the light from the alarm screen dancing across the corrugated metal walls. Helga’...

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“Literary Fiction” by Danielle Barr

I string words together in long, layered necklaces, plucking deep, dimensional baubles shimmering with spangled sheens like ephemeral and buttress, rolling them around in between my fingers, appreciating their shapes and textures, building sentences and stories around sequences of words that buzz with possibility. Don’t force it, Glen cautions. Keep it simple. I hold up my spooling lengths of fragile thin simile and onomatopoeia, sagging in the middle from the weight of their own clunky construction, admire them in th...

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“slug/salt” by Danielle Barr

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #221

Content warning: stillbirth, war She doesn’t know that I’m gone yet. I’ve never seen her before, not as anything but filmy shadows undulating behind creamy pink light, but I would know her anywhere. She’s beautiful; I knew she would be. I could hear it in her voice; the way it crackled with emotion as she sang the words of Taps to soothe the practice pains that washed over us both in surges, a dance we both moved to in time, just she and I, moving between worlds, moving toward each other in the ether. Moving toward one another, until we we...

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“Cletus” by Danielle Barr

My skin was slick with sweat, and the monkey bars left them smelling of pennies.   “You wanna race?” She sidled up to me as if we’d known each other all our lives, were only picking up a conversation briefly interrupted. I looked up at her silhouette, a shadow falling over me where she blocked out the light, tendrils of late afternoon sunbeams radiating out around her slight frame as if she herself were ablaze. “I wanna join the circus. Gotta be fast for the circus.” The statement bewildered me; she must have noticed.  “Elepha...

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“Whale Song” by Danielle Barr

🏆 Winner of Contest #218

Agony broils, but anguish simmers. I have known them both well and in equal measure. In the early days, my brain felt blurry and disjointed; I had the sense of being deep underwater, all undulating shadows and echoing whale song. The darkness was expansive, and the staticky, dull sense of confusion I felt was sometimes intercut with crippling panic. BP is spiking, the whales moan. Slowly, slowly, I floated to the surface, leaving the deep water below me. Still darkness, but the birdsong of faraway waterfowl sharpened, morphing into b...

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“Fallout” by Danielle Barr

Submitted to Contest #217

“I’ve been thinkin’,” Randall says, forced levity coloring his voice; it cracks just enough for me to raise a critical eyebrow at him, and his eyes dart back down to the hammock we’re attempting to string up across the hallway of our dormitory with bungee cables from the emergency kit my dad assembled and stashed away in my car. “I think maybe we should have sex.” I straighten now, my side secured to the not-totally-kosher eye bolt screw I’ve sunk into the drywall. “Oh?” Randall plows ahead, his words tumbling out one atop another. “I ju...

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“What Kind of Mother” by Danielle Barr

🏆 Winner of Contest #215

Trigger Warning: infant/child loss, drowning The day my daughter died, I became the villain of my own life story. When your child dies of cancer, there are fundraisers and flower delivery vans and friends taking shifts sitting up with you through the long black nights and washing your hair. When your child dies and it’s your fault, there are no homemade casseroles filling your freezer, no one to hold your hair back as acrid vomit wracks your body through the early morning hours, bilious and yellow from the lack of meal trains organized...

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“A Haunted House” by Danielle Barr

Submitted to Contest #212

My beloved Antonin- I scarcely eke out the dash, smudging the ink as I do, my hands are trembling so hard. I set down the fountain pen, the only sound in the dark house the clacking of its metal clip against the scarred wooden desktop, and shake both hands back and forth, then massage my fingers, palms, and wrists- as if these tremors are just some byproduct of my age, or of fatigue, that I can rub away. Oh that I could rub this all away! I gasp at the thought of it. Your name on the parchment is like a siren, pulling my attention t...

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“A Worry for Another Day” by Danielle Barr

Submitted to Contest #211

“Brad, everything in me is saying this intel is good. We’ve got…hours to get the word out, mobilize a shitload of C-17s. Someone’s gotta activate the alert system..” A waterfall of the right things to do and the complete impossibility of getting all of it done in time cascaded through my brain and I suddenly felt like I was drowning. I felt the panic begin to strangle me and took a shaky breath to steady my voice. “Even still, there’s just nowhere near enough landing zones or birds- or pilots!- even for all of DC, much less the whole country...

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