By Maddison Scott

I give my mother’s handbag the reverence it deserves by wrapping the seatbelt around its girthy leather middle and letting it ride shotgun. Once home, I unlatch the bag’s brass clips and begin placing each item on the dining table with the trepidation of a snake handler. A pouch of cinnamon coated cashews. A post-it note scrawled with an upcoming hair appointment. A packet of tissues. A half-used Chanel No. 5 bottle. Two ancient lipsticks in the discontinued colors Berrylicious and Devilish Red. A handful of ibuprofen pills floating surreptitiously. A six month old grocery receipt. A half pack of cigarettes (she smoked?) Almond butter hand cream. A green pen. Her famously tattered copy of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. One dead cellphone in a shimmery purple case that–when flipped open–reveals her drivers license, credit cards and $23 cash. An Eiffel Tower keychain attached to a car fob and her house keys. Three sets of cheap reading glasses (all with slightly bent frames.) And a laminated picture of us taken at a Chinese restaurant after my graduation. I pin the picture to my fridge and retrieve a sponge to wipe the blood off everything.

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Maddison Scott is a teacher, writer and procrastinator who lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her short stories have appeared in The Molotov Cocktail, Flash Fiction Magazine and are upcoming in two anthologies for Shacklebound Books. You can find her online at: maddisonscott.wordpress.com