Synkroniciti is honored to welcome writer Nina Morgan of North Carolina, winner of the Expectations Flash Contest with “The Unbearable Weight of Nothing.” In this deeply introspective story, a woman confronts the aftermath of miscarriage, her grief deepened by the unyielding pressure of expectation. She feels inadequate, as if a role has been taken from her, and unsure how to move on, how to move past mere pain management and live.
“I close my eyes and try to picture you, but you’re just water dripping in a cave, reduced to reverberation in a hollow space. What do I give you?
Do I lay down flowers at the grave of possibility?
Do I take photographs of empty chairs?
Do I bury an idea, wrapped in delicate silk, to be devoured by the earth?”
The narrator’s voice moves seamlessly between interior and exterior landscapes, weaving subtle imagery into an atmosphere at once muted and intense, an organic whole that reverberates with loss. We feel her emptiness viscerally: nothing here is extraneous, ornamental, or sentimental. In just 369 words, Nina creates a world that is achingly personal and utterly believable. Her imagery lifts the rawness of pain and grief into the light, allowing us to bear witness to what is too often hidden behind closed doors.
Read “The Unbearable Weight of Nothing” in Synkroniciti’s Expectations, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Nina Morgan is a North Carolina-born author who draws from her background in clinical social work to craft human stories across multiple genres. She has a particular love for elevated horror, speculative fiction, and romance. She has a particular disdain for inaccurately written southern tropes.
She lives in Raleigh, N.C. with her husband and two cats, all of whom are also writers.