Frankie Rollins

The Grief Manuscript Frankie Rollins

This flash fiction novella, The Grief Manuscript, illustrates the dream-like, annihilating, and repetitive gestures of a dying marriage. The story recasts the emotional range of grief using metaphorical images and remarkable characters in brief, poetic scenes. The recently separated narrator inhabits a series of temporary houses as she faces the devastating and radical identity changes that come with divorce. Grief activates the narrator's demon, who appears in the form of a small monster, the Burden Animal, who torments her with her previous humiliations and belief that she is a burden to those who love her. Magical realism offers images of personal torment, where the narrator's head falls off, spiders crawl up her throat, her tongue escapes, and the fields of her psyche burn. It isn't until the narrator accepts the full expanse of her grief that she can see a way to move forward to what is "next."