Once upon a time there were no bears. So, there were no chairs, no porridge and no beds. All Goldilocks had was a big white space with nothing in it but a big white board and dry markers. Sure, she was tired, but she had created her life all by herself. It was exhausting running from the bears, especially the bears which don’t physically exist. Many times in her life she had been chased by Mama Bear, her words caught often and she nearly died.
Instead, she thought to draw some porridge but remembered her mother was the cook, and her mother told her she couldn’t boil water. She wanted to draw a chair, but remembered being criticized for breaking a chair in the house. “Dumb, reckless, and stupid,” Mama Bear’s false words repeated in her head once more.
Finally, she was tired, and wanted, more than anything to draw a bed, but none of the beds at that home were “just right”, and Goldilocks had no idea what to do. So, she tipped the white board ninety degrees, lay down upon it, and then she was free.
Timothy Gager has published 19 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his third novel, Joe the Salamander, and his most recent collection of poetry, Almost Bluing for X-Tra Whiteness. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. His work has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology, and has been read on National Public Radio.
In 2023, Big Table Publishing published The Best of Timothy Gager, an anthology of twenty years of his selected work, with 175 pages of new material. Timothy is the former fiction editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review and the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, MA, and is employed as a social worker.
Image: “Sleeping on the Sidewalk” by Alex J. Tunney
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