Matt Kendrick
Writer | Editor | Teacher
WELKIN GENRE PRIZE 2026 - WINNER OF THE HISTORY PRIZE
Outside a Vet’s Office: Boston, 9/11/2001
by Sarah Freligh
Under the oak tree next to the parking lot, a woman with a mutt on a red leash. A man, too, maybe her husband. Let’s say it’s his dog, the one he adopted from the pound in college when he was living with three guys who never cleaned and ate takeout from a Thai restaurant around the corner. Why does life always lead to a tree outside a vet’s, a red-eyed couple trying to decide, an old dog sniffing the wind? Whatever comes, he’s ready. It’s us who can’t let go. Overhead, a plane banks and turns toward New York.
Sarah Freligh is the author of eight books, including SAD MATH (Moon City Press, 2015) and HEREAFTER, winner of the 2024 Bath Novella in Flash contest.
Judge's comment:
This is a beautifully crafted microfiction which is understated and yet achieves a great deal in a very small space. Through familiar, everyday images the piece creates a scene that feels both ordinary and deeply affecting. Beneath this apparent simplicity lies an undercurrent of grief and impending loss, such as how the old dog '[sniffs] the wind'. Then we come to the ending. The understated reference to a plane turning toward New York on 9/11 creates a sudden shift in scale, connecting a private act of impending loss with a collective catastrophe. I had just sailed out of New York a day before the tragedy, and I could totally relate to this piece - how something so catastrophic had happened in a place where I had been near to, and yet, there I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, unaware of the situation because there was no internet connection on the ship, looking at planes flying up in the distance, not even imagining a disaster of that scale was unravelling in the city we had sailed out of. So impactful!
