Love note for when all the spoons are dirty by Ashton Freeman
Short-shorts editor Adam Nesbit on today’s piece: William Carlos Williams’ refrigerator is well stocked with fruit. He sometimes dances naked in front of the mirror in the north room of his empty house at night. Maybe he was born to be lonely. He never lied to any former lovers about his little-here, little-there purloining habit. But none of them could steal his focus from the world, from his work. It’s possible that to really see the simplest things in life takes a complicated kind of person. At least, this is one universe Ashton Freeman’s wry, bittersweet “Love note for when all the spoons are dirty” might allow you to occupy for a while. And after that, you can read it again.
Love note for when all the spoons are dirty
An ex-lover of mine was an admitted klepto. He stole from the drugstore on Front Street like it was a 9-5. He stole oddities from my grandmother’s china cabinet, my mother’s blue sweater, an ornate spoon from the silverware drawer. He only came over a handful of times. My grandmother never thought much of him and if she didn’t think much of you she made sure you knew it.
I moved away from Front Street and to a new town – a city, in fact – and this old lover held onto everything. Wouldn’t even give me back my pillows or thongs. We called every other Tuesday night because letting go completely proved to be too hard and if he were any good at letting go I’d get a thing or two back.
He called me, voice rough with sleep, and said he dreamt about me again. Was using my grandmother’s spoon as a wishing stick and it caused a snow day. He didn’t say what happened in the dream, I liked to think it was something dirty.
“Stick it in your mouth,” I said to him. “Tell me if it’s cold.”
I heard it clink against his teeth and he hummed around it. He asked how my mother was. I told him I found a new favorite place for coffee. Mostly, we talked about nothing and fell asleep without hanging up.
I woke up to snow.
Ashton Freeman is prone to believing in magic. New York based, they are a writer, educator, and visual artist. Freeman’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter, Milk Press, manywor(l)ds, and Screen Door Review. In 2024 they were nominated for the 2025 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. They are the nonfiction editor for Waxwing Literary Journal and a poetry reader with Pigeon Pages. To find their work–search under rocks, in your sock drawer, the late afternoon, and at ashton-freeman.com.
