To Brown Duck, Potters’ Mill Pond, Brynby Green, Lincolnshire LN12 0BX by Philippa Bowe and Karen Walker

Dear Duck, here there are only gulls for company, some are large and quite pretty but they’re all strangers. Please reply. How are you?

Marjorie’s postcard comes on Tuesday. I respond on Sunday because I do not miss her and her tears. They fill the pond to overflowing. I do miss the homemade bread she throws.

I’m fine. Gulls? Where’s the Man? Can’t recall where you said you were going to meet him. Your feathers not falling out from all the passion? Ha.
Seen one drake, seen ’em all.
Duck.

Dearest Duck, thank you so much for your postcard, how lovely of you, especially when I feel bad leaving like that, though I know you’ve got plenty of cheery company, not like me, I don’t think four yuccas and one aspidistra count. So you must understand, dear Duck, the Man was manna from heaven, kind eyes, good hands, and lots of warm words to tickle my ears and my belly and bits of me that hadn’t been tickled in so so long. And he’s been cooking for me in his cottage here in Cleethorpes, where I’m afraid there’s more concrete than sand, Duck, you wouldn’t like it at all. I’m getting treats in the kitchen (and sometimes in the bedroom), I can’t complain, but oh, Duck! The words have gone cold and congealed, no more heat or pop, all I hear out of his mouth is the dullest quacking – sorry, didn’t mean to be rude! It’s nothing like your lovely quacking, honest! – and it makes me want to stick my head under water and drown him out. Duck, is it true we can’t have it all? Hope you’re enjoying the spring weather.

That’s a lot, Marjorie. I’m sinking under the weight.
Duck.

Darling Duck, yesterday I went for a walk on the beach, I had to get out of the cottage and the Man won’t leave the telly, I wanted to feel sand between my toes. It’s all pebbles. I saw something floating on the waves and thought of you but it was a torn piece of plastic bin bag. It looked like a black hole in the blue sea. I miss you.

Marjorie,
Come home to the pond if you feel so bloody badly there. Since you’ve left, there’s been nothing but stale handouts hurled my way. And I’d say not much better thrown your way in that claustrophobic cottage in Cleethorpes where, I reckon, the Man plans to make you Mrs Man.
The sea is not for us. It’s too big and too cold, the waves too high. We need to touch a weedy bottom, ride ripples, paddle in the warm shallows. Listen, you are a helpless thing like me.

Oh, my dearest darling Duck! Your words have given my heart wings. I’ll be on the 10.45 train tomorrow. You could meet me at the station? Though maybe I’ll fly back, because maybe, just maybe, I could be a duck too.

Philippa Bowe is a writer of flash fiction and poetry and a translator. Her work has been published online and in print, including by Ghost City Press, Reflex Fiction, Bath Flash Fiction and Spark2Flame. She is writing a flash novella, lives on a southern French hill and has become addicted to big vistas. 

Karen Walker (she/her) writes short in a low basement in Ontario, Canada. Her most recent work is in Sage Cigarettes, Misery Tourism, Centaur, Cosmorama, and Bending Genres. @MeKawalker883