Urban Volcano

Fiction by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson

Flash fiction

Handwritings

Handwritings — Illustration by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson
Illustration by Börkur Sigurbjörnsson

I splashed cold water in my face to refresh myself after a long night’s sleep. The fingertips caressed the skin as they slid from the forehead to the chin. I opened my eyes and could feel my body come to life.

I looked down at the hands and felt as if I didn’t recognize them—pale, thin and veinous. Could it be the same pair of hands that had served me so well throughout the decades? The hands that had worked long days at the carpentry workshop and written so many poems on long dark winter nights.

I sat down at my desk, grabbed a pen in one hand and used the other to hold still the sheet of paper. The words flowed from the pen and a new stanza line appeared after another. I definitely recognized the handwriting and the poetry style was the same as I had developed over the years.

They were most likely my own hands after all.

Börkur is an avid storyteller with a keen eye for quirky characters, funny dialogs and vivid scenario descriptions. Much of his writing falls within the genre of realistic fiction and his stories are more often than not based on real events in the author’s life. Although the tales contain grains of truth, they are melded with fiction, making the reader curious to know the line between reality and fantasy.