FlashFiction.Net

My nephew, who finished his first year in a far-off school, sent me a story to read. It had this line at the beginning: “He was an art major, with too much time and glue on his hands.” I’m sure he didn’t know that he had employed the technique of zeugma—of words, such as time and glue, conjoined by a word or phrase that appears with them, the on her hands. One can have either glue or time on one’s hand, but it’s rare to have both. That on her hands is sometimes thought of as the “governing” word/phrase, the part of the sentence that’s in control. Some examples:

As a child, I lay in my bed, both my eyes and bedroom door slightly ajar.

My mother slept in her bedroom, wearing a mask over her eyes, her heart on her sleeve, and my father would sneak into her room to steal a look and maybe the heart itself.

Then, he’d slip through the crack in my door, sit on my bed, speak aloud his thoughts on love, how he wanted to make it last, but it didn’t, like all the things he loved—rainstorms, popcorn, movies, dreams, car rides.

And what of you, he’d ask, you and love? What will it be like for you? A fragile thing, he said, the heart of men in our family, made of moth wings or promises, things like that.

He’d go back to bed. Later, he’d come back out, again sit next to me and say love is love. I still whisper that into the ears of sleeping lovers, love is love. It is all that and nothing more. Love is love, they whisper back, as I sneak out of dreams and doors.

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Now get to it. Write your own micro that relies on zeugma. You will gain a zeugmatastic micro and our respect. What more could you want from a Sunday?