Microfiction: I dropped the dictionary

“You’re amazing,” he says, and I laugh, and kiss him back.

“This isn’t love,” he adds.

It isn’t?

“What is it, then?” I ask.

He shrugs.

So I reach out for the dictionary, but drop it – and all the words spill out, scattering like soundless marbles. I pluck one spinning by: naive. It blinks at me. I snatch another: foolish. He unfurls a sleek deceitful, and grabs another: lying. And another, wildly: cheat.

“It isn’t true!” he says, wide-eyed, and then one floats between us like a feather.

Eybdoog is not a word,” he says.

“Goodbye,” I say.

© Joanna Rubery 2017

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