Uncle Carlito went back to Sicily every October for the quail hunting, but everybody knew he had another wife in Messina, Aunt Linda let slip one Sunday at dinner. Jimmy and I just looked at each other.

That’s all I know of the story.

But it’s stayed with me all these years, almost like a destination, though I’ve never had any desire to go to Messina.

Publisher’s Note (28 November 2019):

“Wildflowers” was published previously in a slightly different version (concluding with a tanka verse), in Atlas Poetica (Issue 30, November 2017, page 72). My apologies to editor and publisher M. Kei that this acknowledgment does not appear in the KYSO Flash print anthology for 2018, Accidents of Light, which was released ten months before I discovered the previous publication of this story.

Peter Fiore

lives and writes in Mahopac, New York. He is the author of three books: text messages, a collection of tanka poems; flowers to the torch, tanka prose (Keibooks, 2015); and when angels speak of love, a novella (Loose Moose Press, 2017). His prose and poems have been published in American Poetry Review, Atlas Poetica, Bright Stars, great weather for MEDIA, KYSO Flash, Poetry Now, Rattle, Sandy River Review, Skylark, Still Crazy, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Skylark, and elsewhere.

Fiore is also a jazz pianist, having played in several venues in the greater New York City area including The Black Whale and LeRefuge in City Island and Pete’s Saloon in Elmsford, New York.