Nobody Ever Told Her Why A Violin Needs Holes

Longlisted (Top 10%): New Writers Flash Fiction Competition

Nobody Ever Told Her Why A Violin Needs Holes is a flash fiction piece exploring absence, grief, and what it means to navigate womanhood in the face of isolating desire. It was one of two pieces longlisted (top 50 out of 600+) at the 2025 New Writers Flash Fiction Competition

Will you, he asked, wait forever in that room?

Waiting was just what women did: for periods; promotions; and for doctors to check Google, call it healthcare, and send the invoice. She shrugged.

It’s funny how the right details can make spaces feel like rooms. That was why she still kept the music box, and protected it from dust: a declaration of intent. Funnier was that just three conversations achieved the reverse: six words, total, stripped the room back into space.

Space, as in void. Funnier, as in not very funny at all.

‘It’s probably nothing.’

The first time, she hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. The doctor that checked her cramps apologetically asked a nurse to talk her through the results instead, she didn’t know what to do except clutch their pamphlet and ponder precisely how often women died of “its-probably-nothing.”

The second time, they insisted people didn’t realise how frequently it happened but still used the phrase ‘unexplained infertility.’ She finally told her husband. He brought tea, suggested yoga, and firmly refused tests.

She stopped counting, he stopped asking, and they stopped naming it. Miscarriage made it sound like a postal error, as if their package might turn up any day.

We’re already happy, he’d say, you’re enough. She held her tongue to avoid arguments about her weeping uterus. She hated that he was kind, but at least it gave her something to do. He knew that.

His last word was ‘sorry’, and one morning, he was gone. Then she hated him even more.

There’s no name for an empty nursery, for women missing children they’ve never met. She wound the key on the music box three times, and hummed as it rang its simple tune.

Only hollow instruments can sing, and her lullabies were songs for absent ghosts.