Sardine Grey
by Nadine Telesford
Photo by ManojMk Brucelee
The boy is in an ill-fitting suit. The sky swelters, leaving polyester damp against his skin, and gum clinging to his shoe grows battered by the pavement. He is enveloped in black — except for right below his knees, where the pants are a sardine grey.
Somewhere there was a child playing. Woodchips surrounded him and lifted as he swung on the playground. A contagious giggle and a fathers strong hands at his back. Wooshing and scraping like a pendulum. To feel so light, to be so held.
The boy is reaching his destination. Scraping the gum off his shoe and using leaves as tissue paper.
The child is looking at where there once was a tree, but now is only a stump. The growth rings are older than him and his father. If he stretched his whole body across it he could not cover the length. To be so easily discarded and frozen in time.
The child remembers what he was told when he was just a boy: the tree grew too large and began invading foundations. Like cancer festering in the body, the tree surrounded and cracked longbuilt structures, a tragedy really.
The child tugs at his suit, the sleeves feel too long and meant for someone bigger. He enters the church and knows the man the suit was bought for. That man is now reduced to the past. The service is open casket and inside, his father’s hair is a sardine grey.
Nadine Telesford’s “Sardine Grey” received first place in the BCPW’s 2026 Flash Fiction Contest. Nadine attends Martingrove Collegiate Institute.