Masha Kurbatova

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Sep, 2019

Stories (39)

39 Stories

2572 karma pts

?

“dance like angels do” by Masha Kurbatova

Smart people go one of two ways. Take my sister -- she was brilliant. All day, she would run around in her diapers, chasing butterflies in the backyard, putting caterpillars into mason jars with a few leaves of cabbage. She learned to read with butterfly field guides, went to college for biology, studied every night until her eyes nearly bled. She grew up to be a leading lepidopterist, a butterfly scientist, working at a...

15 comments 15
Read story

“somebody else's spit” by Masha Kurbatova

He was not surprised or happy to see me. He looked weary, the skin thinning beneath his eyes and creasing on every corner. I told him, even in high school, that sunscreen wasn’t optional. He never listened, and now paid the price, looking as old and exhausted as he really was. That was partly my fault.  We met at Burger King. We were both overdressed. Our pride wouldn’t let us go otherwise. I slid into th...

6 comments 6
Read story

“write about love” by Masha Kurbatova

My academic advisor wears reading glasses whose pearly lanyard wraps around her head. When she’s disappointed in me, she takes off her glasses, letting them hang dejected down her neck. Her skin glistens, toad-like, as I notice with many older women. My own has begun thinning recently, and I fear everyone sees.  But my academic advisor, she does not care about my skin. I doubt she cares about me ...

2 comments 2
Read story

“heat, july” by Masha Kurbatova

Winston Churchill described his depression as a “black dog.” I imagine something big, hulking, and British, with jowls that sagged as low as his. My own is a pampered little chihuahua. It's a nasty lapdog that yaps all day, demands its fox-ears be cleaned with cotton swabs, its rotten teeth be sprayed with something minty. I lay down, close my eyes, just for a minute, and it jumps on my back.

5 comments 5
Read story

“in the air again” by Masha Kurbatova

Strings of ants crawled on the walls of my seventh-grade French classroom, really a trailer. Our middle school, like most in Georgia, had little money and too many kids. When the classrooms run out of space, they put up trailers. A cluster of them parked outside the gym. It was freezing in the wintertime, scorching in the spring, with bees and hornets visiting class daily, as if we were pioneer ch...

5 comments 5
Read story

“the earth looks better from a star” by Masha Kurbatova

We met on a long bus ride. I sat next to him, and his feet turned toward me. His whole body was on a diagonal in my direction, and I thought who does that? Who rearranges themselves to pay so much attention to a stranger?  I had books and binders on my lap. An hour into our conversation, he put one wrist on top of the pile. It was still early morning, blue night light filling the bus, blurring shapes and faces i...

7 comments 7
Read story

“angel in the snow” by Masha Kurbatova

There is no “the one.” There’s only the one that’s perfect for you in the moment. Some people you choose again and again. Some you choose once and never again.  Carl and I, we chose each other. We kept choosing each other. I knew there was a limit. I knew the kids thing would eventually come up. We kept pushing that discussion back. But we also were both getting older, and nearing the relationship point o...

6 comments 6
Read story

“right angle cross of the vessel of love” by Masha Kurbatova

I wasn’t mad. More so relieved. The worst had happened. I didn’t feel the pain yet -- the pipeline from my brain to my heart had long sprung a leak. I’d process everything later.  I couldn’t think. Not because of outrage, I just hadn’t drunk coffee that morning for the first time in 22 years. My breath would smell bad no matter how much gum I chewed, and I was a clumsy liability. Knowing my shaky hands, t...

1 comment 1
Read story

“cold little heart” by Masha Kurbatova

I can only be in love with one person at a time. My body is weak, and love is too strong. It requires motors, nuclear facilities, every solar panel in the world to keep burning, energy channeled from every collapsing star in every dying galaxy. I can’t even hold my own back straight or keep my fingers from shaking; how am I to generate the gigawatts for loving everyone?  It’s easier to love the small thin...

2 comments 2
Read story

“we'll still be best friends when all turns to dust” by Masha Kurbatova

Mock trial practice ends late these days. The stars are already out when I leave school. I join our youngest team members, the yet-unlicensed fifteen year olds waiting for their parents in the carpool lane. The air is sweet, the grass swells with dew, a breeze gently scrapes the clouds aside to reveal a crescent moon. The kids are buzzing. It’s their first competition tomorrow. They look to me approaching with such awe, ...

7 comments 7
Read story

“lovers rock” by Masha Kurbatova

It was one of those rare mornings when everything was perfect. Morning light, cold and white, shone through the blinds, casting bright and wide strips on his skin and mine. I didn’t usually wake up before him. I didn’t see the point - I wasn’t a person who knew what to do with an early morning. That day too, I decided to stay in bed. Just look around. There wasn’t much in the bedroom, white walls, a dresser, no decor. St...

2 comments 2
Read story

“what could be worse” by Masha Kurbatova

   My aunt died. It happens. I liked her though. She was a bizarre lady -- some days you couldn’t get a word out of her, some days she jabbered on like a parrot, eyes to the ceiling, hands waving at her sides. She always had some new Thing, some schtick she was working on. She was going back to school, she got a new job, she was trying out some new diet, some new boyfriend, something different with her eye makeup. She wa...

7 comments 7
Read story

“anjela” by Masha Kurbatova

“I’m not very good at talking about this stuff. So. Nevermind.’’ She buries her face in the pillow. I mean, I’m very good at talking about it either, but I wish she would at least make an effort. Aren’t poets supposed to put their feelings into words?  I can’t tell if she’s actually asleep or faking it. Sometimes she’s so still, I worry she’s died. I squint in the dark, stare at her belly, make sure it st...

2 comments 2
Read story

“dead cat” by Masha Kurbatova

   I’m laying in bed, not so much a bed, a bedframe with a memory foam mattress that accelerated my spinal problems all through adolescence. The scene is familiar, it’s nightime, the yellow light bounces off yellow walls and reflects off the window and even the moon shies away, and there’s a ladybug making dumb circles around the room, droning like the teeniest fighter jet. My carpet is nasty -- I never bothered to vacuu...

5 comments 5 SHORTLIST ⭐️
Read story

“bop to the top” by Masha Kurbatova

   You would think, after being on this Earth for, what, fifty, sixty years, people would be wise. They would be set in their ways, confident in their quirks, complete masters of their own ships. But going on date after date, Robert soon realized that was just not the case. His wife had been dead for nearly a decade then, and he figured Eugenia could forgive him. He wouldn’t marry again, he promised. He just didn’t want ...

1 comment 1
Read story

Author bio

masha! 22! she/her! my instagram is @dogenthusiast if you want to connect more!

Winning 2 stories 🏆

Contest #63
come to atlanta! – read story
Contest #39
sole mate – read story

Shortlisted 2 stories ⭐️

Contest #46
dead cat – read story
Contest #44
the end of the tour – read story