Flash, Prosery, Short Prose

Into Oblivion

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Written for dVerse Prosery: Walcott’s Dark August.
Our host Kim asks us to write a piece of flash fiction
of up to or exactly 144 words, including the line shown
below by Derek Walcott. Here’s where his line took me.

“I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones.”
– from Derek Walcott’s “Dark August”

© Nightcafe

She remembered her father; how she adored him! If he was ineffectual, she never saw that side of him. All she saw was the delightful man who loved her beyond the moon, sang silly songs, made her laugh and bought her penny candy. He took her to the carnival, picnicking by the lake, tilting at windmills and searching the sky for clouds in the shape of dinosaurs or butterflies or whatever his imagination created. 

If he was drunk, she didn’t realize. Once or twice she asked why he wasn’t at work. He would laugh, saying “If only I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones”, adding that work would always be there tomorrow. But work was not there the next day and he drank himself into oblivion. Then one day he was gone and it was as though he never existed.

NAR©2025
144 Words

This is “I’m Gonna Dress In Black” by Eilen Jewell

Prosery: Walcott’s Dark August

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30 thoughts on “Into Oblivion”

  9. I’m so pleased you joined us for Prosery, Nancy, and I got to read into oblivion with your protagonist and her beloved father. My father sang silly songs and made me laugh too; thankfully, he didn’t drink. Such a sad ending, contrasting with the fun-filled opening paragraph.

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