Flash Fiction

Salt in the Sugar Bowl

Some things don’t sweeten, no matter how much you stir

Digital art by the author.

The kettle screams, steam curling like a ghost against the cracked kitchen window. I watch the pot boil over, but I don’t move. The fire hisses when the water spills, blackening the burner in angry spots.

Mama used to say you could tell the state of a woman’s heart by the way she kept her kitchen.

“Turn that off before you burn the house down,” he says, voice thick with sleep.

I don’t turn. “Let it burn.”

The linoleum peels in the corners, little edges curling up like dead leaves. I used to dream of a house with floors that shone, where nothing crunched underfoot, where I didn’t have to tiptoe so nobody noticed I was there. But the dreams got smaller, like dresses shrunk too tight in the wash, until all that was left was this: a kitchen that smells of burnt toast and a man who never quite wakes up.

He lights a cigarette, doesn’t offer me one. His fingers tap against the table, slow, deliberate. “You always got something to prove.”

I stir sugar into my coffee, but the taste is wrong.

Salt.

His laughter is quiet, almost kind. “Ain’t that just like you? Trying to sweeten something that ain’t meant to be sweet.”

The walls of this kitchen have heard more than their share of things breaking — plates, voices, promises. My mother once told me you could leave a place without ever walking out the door. I never believed her, but maybe she was right.

The night before, we sat on the porch, summer pressing against our skin like a wet cloth. The cicadas hummed, their song the sound of things that won’t stop, even when you wish they would.

“Thought you said you were leaving.”

I held my cigarette between my fingers, watched the ember flare when I inhaled. “I did.”

“And yet here you are.”

Some things stick to you, even when you try to wash them off. Regret. Loneliness. The way a man’s voice can crawl under your skin, curl up inside your bones, whisper to you when you try to sleep.

I tell myself I love him. That’s what good women do. They stay. They love harder. They make sugar out of salt, sweeten things that refuse to be sweet.

Mama knew better.

“You ever wonder what it’d be like,” I ask, “if we were different people?”

He exhales, smoke curling between us. “No point in wondering.”

The streetlamp outside flickers, struggling against the night. Shadows stretch long against the kitchen walls. He reaches for my wrist, thumb pressing against the pulse there, like he’s counting the beats, making sure I’m still here.

I don’t pull away.

Not yet.

But there’s a bag packed under the bed, full of things that don’t belong here — clothes that don’t smell like him, money folded tight in an old coffee tin, a bus ticket with tomorrow’s date.

The sugar bowl sits open on the table, white grains scattered like spilled stars.

“You gonna fix another cup?” he asks.

I stand, reach for the spoon. Stir slow.

The taste is wrong.

Not salt this time.

Not sweet, either.

Something else. Something new.

I swallow.

I let it sit on my tongue.

And then I set the cup down, stand up, and walk out the door.

© Ani Eldritch, 2025. All Rights Reserved.