Synkroniciti is glad to welcome back writer Julie Dron, currently based in Taiwan, with “Returning,” a striking flash fiction piece telling the story of Yi-Jun, a daughter returning home after the deaths of her parents. A successful woman, a professor at an American University, she regrets not visiting them and disdaining their simple farm life. The sight of the family clothesline brings back a memory of the wind tugging her mother’s white shirt out of her hands, where it landed in the red dirt. “She had felt guilt, for her carelessness. Now it scratched and scribbled at her insides, unrelenting, as she looked down at fields defeated and overgrown with unchecked weeds.” Finding your path often creates distance from your family, not only for immigrants, but for many people. Sometimes we have time and will to regain a sense of togetherness. Sometimes we don’t.
Julie is a master at creating mood and including just enough detail to complete the story while piquing curiosity for more. It’s a verbal watercolor complete in a few well-placed, beautiful strokes. Read “Returning” in our “Family” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Julie Dron is originally from the UK and currently lives in Taiwan. Since she began writing fiction in her sixties she has been published in a variety of printed anthologies and online journals including Synkroniciti, Syncopation Literary Journal, Wordrunner eChapbooks, The Wild Word, Amaranth, Blink Ink, Shorts Magazine and Danse Macabre. Her work has been short listed with commendation by Scottish Arts Flash Fiction in 2022 and twice nominated for the 2024 Pushcart prize.