Katie E. ten Hagen

Fractured Lit 2024 Flash Fiction Open Finalist

My dad mowed the lawn every Saturday morning—weather permitting—for seventy-two years. Vacations were scheduled around it, plans turned down, brunches skipped, because that lawn wasn’t gonna mow itself. When his heart started acting up and I said maybe he could think about getting someone else to do it, maybe he could take a break, enjoy retirement, he looked at me like I’d suggested he take a bath with some morays, just for the thrill.

So, in retrospect, I don’t know why I expected death to be the thing that stopped him.

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