My sister and I do cannonballs off the diving board into our kidney shaped pool. Mommy holds onto the edge in the shallow end, kicks her legs for thinner thighs. I dance in a grass skirt to Hilo Hatti. My sister plays the ukulele. We take naps under grandma’s mink coats. I play in orange groves, peel the skin and suck the juice out of oranges, ride my bike in the dirt alongside irrigation ditches, play badminton with my sister and stepfather, tetherball by myself. Mommy almost chokes to death on a piece of steak. She wears perspiration pads and a girdle with no underwear for modeling jobs, takes a lot of douches… Read more of “In the Valley of the Sun” online HERE

“In the Valley of the Sun” was chosen as the runner-up of the Ryan R Gibbs Flash Fiction contest 2016.

Read Gleah's interview HERE