jiggle

by Cheryl Snell

A woman is peeling off her girdle.

I don’t like to see that, I don’t like to see a girdle coming off an old woman like that, says a Peeping Tom.

The girdle seems to be making for the woman’s knees. If it can get there, it should be an easy drop to the floor. It may want to loll for a moment in an elastic puddle; its garters snapping open and shut.

Yet, in the room attached to that window with the peeper, the woman is looking at a framed photo of her mother; who had squeezed her into her first girdle, fearing her body might explode into curves and fecundity at any moment.

The Peeping Tom says, it’s lucky the mother can’t see all those folds and puckery! This is not the body she assigned the daughter.

In the room attached to the window that the peeper has been peeping in, the woman sees shadows and a flickering on the glass pane.

She mumbles something about the window. Some something about the light.

Now the peeper is dropping down, scaling the wall backwards; and running back to his home in the bushes. The woman kicks her girdle through the window.

Photo of Cheryl Snell

BIO: Cheryl Snell’s books include poetry and fiction. Her most recent writing has appeared in Maudlin House, Ghost Parachute, Flash Boulevard, 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, and Midway. She has stories in the 2025 Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions anthologies. She lives in Maryland.