Let me do my work

 Dedicated to Alessandro

There we go.
And now.
That’s what I need.
Next.
A bucket.
This goes here.
Shit.
Dropped it all.
A broom.
Now what.
Needs to dry.
What is this.
Nothing.
Damn.
No way.
Next thing I need.
Found it.
Now that.
Doesn’t work at all.
Maybe it will.
All OK.

– Nicole Weiß (© 2024)

Author’s note
Yesterday, the handyman Alessandro S. was working in my house. This short story is more or less based on things he mumbled to himself while he was going about his work.

Translation from German. The German version was published here.

A flash flat character study

Middle-aged woman on a walk with her friend: “And I of necessity take valerian.”

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2019)

Note
As I was walking along this morning, two women crossed my path, and I caught this fragment of conversation in Italian (“e io per forza prendo valeriana”). Let’s say this is an American sentence with an Italian character in it.