Dating the Ice Cream Man But He Doesn’t Know I Have a Thing for Fire

by Catherine Roberts

Lazar Gugleta

When we kiss, I fill the holes in his teeth with my tongue, open my eyes while his green ones stay closed, see the discount-stickered candle burning steady on his coffee table and I’m there, in the backyard watching Dad set fire to the I’m-leaving-you-note and satin dresses and g-strings and coupons and souvenir dish towels — rip-crack-whoosh — the scarves of fire groping at my mother’s things making my chest flicker and my fingertips prickle, and then I’m biting the Ice Cream Man’s lip, dreaming of life as we know it burning, the smell of mint chocolate chip and gasoline, strawberry soft serve with the chunks of real fruit squirming over asphalt like broken hearts, the truck in flames, sprinkling glass and nursery rhymes, its awning charred and flapping like a melting smile missing some teeth.

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Catherine Roberts is a 2024 Best Small Fictions nominee. Her work has been published/is forthcoming in Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, Emerge Literary Journal, and New Flash Fiction Review — among other places. Find her on Twitter/X under the handle: @CRobertsWriter