Guest Post: "Your Heart, in a Thimble and on its Way to the Thinnest Home in the World" by Pat Foran
"She put her little heart in a thimble, which is kind of like a box, a lidless one, but still." - Pat Foran
Occasionally on “when hope writes” I’ll publish guest posts by brilliant artists and writers. If you want to be a guest blogger on my Substack, please connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, or my website.
Today I’m sharing an evocative, imaginative flash fiction piece titled “Your Heart, in a Thimble and on its Way to the Thinnest Home in the World” by Pat Foran, a smashing and extraordinary fiction writer, supporter of writers, and friend to all. The flash was previously published in Truffle Magazine, which you can also read here.
She didn’t know what to do with her heart—not that you have to know, not that you ever have to know, but it was acting up, as her partner liked to say, acting up and making a mess of things—so she put it in a box to give it a place to chill.
Not the heart-shaped box they sing about. Not the bankers box they make up nursery rhymes about. Not the funerary box they tell their troubles to. Not the confining one they put themselves in. She put her little heart in a thimble, which is kind of like a box, a lidless one, but still.
“It’s kind of like a box, a lidless one, but still,” she said to the man behind the counter at The UPS Store.
“It’s cute,” the man said. “I like it.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“What’s in this lidless box?”
“My heart,” she said.
“Where are we sending it today?”
“Home,” she said, and she said it without thinking, in a sort of blurt that sounded like a hiccup.
“You want to send it home—is that what you said?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m not sure why I said it, and I’m not sure what I mean.”
“Where’s home?” he asked.
Home wasn’t where she grew up, a surfer town where surfing wasn’t allowed, and cat-lashing laws were strictly enforced. Where dreams weren’t your ticket out or sold on the black market.
Home wasn’t where she lived now, with a dog and a cat and a man and a mantel cluttered with photos of cosmic disturbances and Coney Island chorus girls in mother-of-pearl frames.
She wasn’t sure where her home was, or where her heart was supposed to be.
“Maybe home is in the most delicate, and thinnest, of places—like the messaging space on my laptop,” she hiccupped. “Maybe home is in the words and memes and emojis and misunderstandings of love from a man, another man, not my man but another man, who I think loves me.”
Thin in its thimble, her heart trembled, skipped a beat, then stopped beating altogether to lean in and listen.
The man behind the counter said he was pretty sure her laptop messaging space was not in UPS’s delivery area. But the “thinnest of places”—there, UPS could go.
“There’s this place—The Thinnest Home in The World,” he said. “The Etgar Keret House in Warsaw, Poland. Thirty feet tall and thinner than a stovetop.”
“That’s pretty thin,” she said.
“It is,” he said.
They could get it there by rigging a little hot air balloon to the thimble and nudging the thin little package in the direction of Warsaw. After flitting across the Atlantic, drifting over the North and Baltic seas, the thimble full of heart would hang a right and hover across Polish skies. From there, a ring-billed gull masquerading as a carrier pigeon would guide the thimble to the Thinnest Home in The World, the UPS man said.
Her heart began beating again, still trembling, but beating, softly.
“Would someone be there to sign for it?” she asked.
“If you want.”
If she wanted. What she wanted was peace. Heart peace.
“It’s acting up, this heart of mine—you understand, right?” she said. “Who is this man I live with? Who is this other man who loves me? I say these things and I think about home...how, sometimes, it’s good to go home. Right? Wherever that might be. Wherever it could be. Right?”
“Right,” he said.
“What do you do, where do you go, when you’ve got a heart that can’t read between the messaging lines because who the fuck can? When you’ve got a heart that needs. When you have an elusive, illusory feeling of home that leaves you hanging.”
“Home is anywhere you don’t hang your head,” he said. “Right?”
“Anywhere your heart-in-a-thimble is?” she said. “Right?”
Gentle as a meme of the morning moon, the UPS man picked up the thimble, minding the rhythm of the heartbeat, the thinning of the tremble.
Easy now, he whispered in white heart emojis, gently placing the thimble on the scale. Easy.
Pat Foran is a writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work was selected for the Best Small Fictions 2021 and Best Microfiction 2021 anthologies, and for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2022. He also received the 2021 Mythic Picnic Prize in Fiction.
Web: https://neutralspaces.co/patforan/
Twitter: @pdforan
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@patforan1549
Please leave a comment of appreciation for Pat Foran’s staggering, breathtaking work and share the post widely with others.
Thank you!
Sublime. Read and Restack this. Thanks so much, Nadja and grats to Pat. Amazing piece.
Pat Foran is a stunning writer. Thanks for showcasing this story, Nadia!