Becky May

They’d hung Monet’s ‘Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond’ across the white expanse of wall in the end room, benches at regular intervals in front of it on the polished wooden floor. Helen imagined herself removing her shoes, dipping her feet in the nymph-like blue, stems trailing across her ankles, cool after the heat of New York’s streets. Shrugging off her shift dress, checking nobody was watching, wading in, the lilies caressing her shoulder. Tilting herself back, letting the water catch her, suspended beneath the powdered sky. 

Somewhere in the crush of the streets outside, Vince would be browsing through souvenirs, thinking about lunch. Burger, fries, coke. Well, we are in America love, aren’t we? He’d ask her how the museum had been and she wouldn’t be able to make him see. The delicate stroke of the lilies she had pocketed for herself. 

Becky has recently finished a PG Diploma in Creative Writing at The University of York. Her work has been published in Ellipsiszine and Mistake House magazine and was longlisted for the Bath Short Story Award in 2019. When she isn’t teaching English in Granada, Spain, she loves adventuring through words, as much as through the world. She tweets at @beckymaywriter.