Zilla Babbitt

“The Old Well” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #275

It’s a late summer day, now. Spiders die and are carried off, and the sun is stirred by breezes from the south, and the oak leaves begin to look downward, tired and bleached. The squirrels know no statelier or longer days than these here, and run through the afternoon accompanied by mournful robins whose feathers are always a little duller each passing year.  And yet the window does not change; it never does. Through it she can see the old well, the rounded limestones flaked with age and the ever-present steam rising from wherein the wa...

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“The Ballerina Stories: Vol. One” by Zilla Babbitt

They say the woman came from the ocean when she was still young, and that she came of her own free will. And they said that years later, when she tried to return, she could not. Spending years by the shore, night after night, begging the ocean to take her back. By the time the water stilled like a lake and the moon shone violet, as it had the night she left, she was but an old woman, old and with a family now, with a life full of other lives. She took her coffee on the veranda, and wept at night, and read her books, dreaming of the ocean wit...

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“The Unknown” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #105

Content warning: suicideThe unknown man lies dead in the barn for three days, and on the fourth we bury him. We tried to bury him before but had to wait, the ground was so hard. Gunne, who tried to dig the plot in the cemetery down the road, says it was like trying to break ice with a toothpick. So we wait until the March thaw frees the ground enough to dig up cold earth for a resting place. We wanted to do everything right, lay him there with all the rites and prayers and everything, as if he had been our own dear brother.The second ni...

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“La Tempestad” by Zilla Babbitt

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #91

Spring, 2021 The end of the day begins when the roar of the vacuum starts up in the back rooms of Lakewood Library. It blends into the familiar sounds of the two librarians on the last shift reshelving books and swiping old cards, before locking the glass doors behind them. It blends into the sounds of rush hour passing by and heading home to dinner or to night shifts. It signals to my brain that the day is over and there is one last thing to do before I can go home, fold the laundry, count the bills, and make dinner.The vacuum is old and we...

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“The Garden” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #86

Springtime in the garden always began when the pink azaleas started to bud. Dad would find them while checking the garden fence for rabbit tunnels and come inside with an armful of the tiny blossoms, ready to trim and slip into a Mason jar. The first year it happened, he came inside, his face flushed with excitement, a single pink bud the size of a fingernail pinned between his dirt-crusted fingers. Look, the azaleas are flowering, he told the both of us. Springtime. In the summers, but mostly in the spring, in the heat of the day when ...

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“The Hidden Force of Tempered Glass” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #85

That’s the thing about this city—it looks like it’s made all of glass. The city seems so big and hardy, full of stretching alleys and ever-expanding secret holes and infinite dim-lit streets. And at night the skyscrapers, glassy and poignant, are the only things marking the path to the sky. There is the big one Mom and I called the Keyhole, because there is a gap at the top that some huge god-sized key might unlock. To where we didn’t know. Narnia, probably. Heaven, Mom always said. “El cielo.” She is like that. She loves the city. It i...

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“The Longing” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #84

Summer, 1961 My older sister moved back home after a month with a new accent and a listless gaze. She went away to forge new life for herself in Chicago when she was fifteen and returned without hope, her expression drawn and sad, her wallet full but her face empty. After she got back I’d wake up sometimes at night, from the heat, and her bed would be empty.  She and I didn’t go to school anymore, not for years. The superintendents didn’t think it was worth climbing the hill to check on us kids. It is hard to climb a thorny hill and co...

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“Cut-Off Eyes” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #83

It was six o’clock in the morning and my portrait had woken up. Usually I don’t let myself be taken in by the shriveled portrait-drawers on the streets of Abuja, but the drawer looked about my age, and so handsome, and I couldn’t help it. It was only two nairas, anyway. So I sat for him, while Mama bought rice and raw murre bird in street markets of Abuja, Nigeria, and let him sketch me.He was terrible at it. I brought the paper home, propped it up against the big calabash bowl beside the door, and vowed to burn it in the morning. ...

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“Creation” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #83

The sea tells me I am its mother. It hides and holds me tight and I remain buried beneath the salty, night-colored waves. I have lain this way since the universe and I were born and the great celestial clock first began to tick far beyond the reaches of eternity. The seas rush up against me, warming me, cooling me, covering me. I have never seen the sky. But then, I have only just awoken.The water moves across the lines against my face. 🌍I am still young when the seas peel back. It startles me; I have grown larger than I thoug...

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“Happy” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #81

I’ve never seen her before, only in shards of dreams and slices of déjà vu. Oh, she’s looking at me. I stare at the table and try to remember where her face comes from. It’s rounded, sort of soft on the chin, the eyes grey and bright as they catch on my face.  I know her from before. I don’t want to find where she’s from, I don’t want to find her face in my memory. It’ll stick and stay for a little, and then slip away like everything else.  There’s a mark on the inside of my Coca-cola bottle. The dark liquid slides away from the ma...

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“The Conundrum of Living” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #77

In winter one forgets summer ever existed. One forgets how to live. Can a man who is warm understand one who is cold? No, he is warm. He is in a different universe entirely. Can a dead thing feel pain? No, it is dead. It is in another life. Can winter feel warmth? No, it is dead. It is outside of warmth. On Planet Ten not only does winter feel only deadness and cold, it feels no joy, so fully is it dead. Winter here on Planet Ten is truly winter. Nothing moves but the incessant snowstorms, not even the sun. Day after day I sit alon...

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“Philosophy of Time” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #77

“Do you believe in God?” Maya asked. She blew out a frosty steam of air and laid her mittened palms on her narrow bright-red face to warm it. “What?” her sister asked. Her boots were much larger than Maya’s; the tops too wide, letting in clumps of snow onto her sockless feet. The boots, thick black rubber with heavy soles, sank through the crusty rim of snow and into the softer belly, almost to the frozen dirt six inches beneath.Maya repeated the question.Jane sat down in a pile of snow and leaned back to look at the sky, thinking hard....

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“The Black Dress” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #75

Every year, Margrit tells herself that this is the year she’ll stay home on Friday nights. Every single year, since she left Berkeley her junior year and began to spend life in nice clothes, in other people’s houses. Every single year, since she began to deprive herself of privacy and peace, and instead spent herself for the benefit of others and the addictive reward of their company.Some years Margrit has more than one resolution. In 2010 it was to make a friend and stay home nights. That year she met Tyler, who went to see Battle Royale wi...

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“Delilah” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #73

December 2018 “Marry me, Delilah!” a voice screams over the crowd as I close the front door behind me. I act like I didn’t hear and make a beeline for the kitchen, where I see Patrice serving punch into crystal cups.  “Hi,” I say, as I take off my winter coat. “You look shot.” She looks drunk, not shot. Her hair is oddly askew, her eyes more than a little wild, her dark red lips smeared with several added layers of lipstick.  “You’re late!” she says loudly, handing me a brimming cup of punch. I take a gulp as I slip my purse of...

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“The Dove” by Zilla Babbitt

Submitted to Contest #73

The plane lifted off smoothly and Toronto began to disappear beneath the wind blown clouds. Kyrie rested her forehead against the greasy plastic window and watched the patchwork of fields, the ribbons of rivers, the buttons of moors, blur beneath the jet. It was a quiet Christmas Eve flight with little turbulence, but for Kyrie it seemed to last forever. The desire to get quickly home surprised her, since whenever she was at home she wished to be away. Her home, the tired five-room apartment with grey walls and handful of smudged windows, on...

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