We Had Something Beautiful by Kathryn Silver-Hajo

We Had Something Beautiful

We were agents of change. We wrote about how hugging, laughter, and kissing can lengthen your life. Warned that toxins in commercial cosmetics seep surreptitiously through nails and pores. We advocated ditching pesticides and gardening with beneficial nematodes instead. We shared resources for Shiatsu, Rolfing, and Reiki, healing with homeopathy. Concocted recipes with sea vegetables and seitan, reishi mushrooms, amaranth, and spelt.

We created cover art, ran ads for holistic health spas and nut-milk producers. We brainstormed while stretched out with our dogs on the floor of a drafty warehouse building withexposed brick and beams though industrial was not yet chic. We paced the length of creaky floorboards barefoot, debating the content of an upcoming issue, a swirl of patchouli trailing behind. We wore cotton and hemp, drew on angled drafting tables, typed on PCs, saving our work on stiff, square “floppies.” Creative joked that Sales and Marketing were whores. Circulation said Editorial were snobs and we all agreed Finance were penny-pinching pains-in-the-ass.

We sent documents and mock-ups on chirping fax machines, left voice messages for vendors, waited for callbacks while clocks ticked on the walls, the sweet soil smell of simmering brown rice wafting in from the kitchen. We gossiped about who was sleeping with whom. We ate teriyaki tempeh, quinoa and kale for lunch, celebrated one birthday with an eggless, stevia-sweetened, tofu-frosted cake. After that it was strictly sushi for special occasions. We flirted and fought and fiddled until we made a magazine we were proud of, hand delivered proofs to the printer, celebrated with everything bagels for breakfast and began all over again.

But then they called a special, staff-wide meeting on a non-staff-wide meeting day. We sat around the old wooden door-cum-conference table, exchanging uneasy glances despite the still-warm, reassuring air of September whispering in through the windows. They arrived bearing sharpened pencils and flip charts, bow ties and bottom lines. They penned pink slips, pointed to the door, sneered at the dogs, tossed bonuses to a chosen few. We fumed and stewed, felt guilty but decided to stay.

We believed that fair was fair, that there was work to be done. We asked around, arranged a meeting with a union organizer at a too-near park, sat cross-legged on the spiky grass, clusters of yellowed leaves curling around us, the sky a gray weight hovering. While exploring options we saw one of them pass by in a neat navy-blue suit and clicking kitten heels. Too late to avert eyes, cover faces. We were busted. Branded. They’d thought us the good ones, the loyal, the willing drinkers of their FD&C-laced Kool-Aid—not a scheming cadre of visionary warriors on a mission, pens and foraged fungi in hand, girding ourselves for battle against their supposedly crunchier brand of corporate America.

Still, we were certain we could win. We were all in. The paperwork would be done and delivered in days. We shook hands, returned to our offices straight-backed and sure. We bickered, plotted, prepared, and high-fived, while behind closed doors they must have fixed their sharp, shrewd glares on the wide-open horizon, studied market share potential, envisioned the opportunities that loomed, carpe’d their diem and delivered the remaining pink slips to us and the ghosts of our dogs, scattering us like grains of pollen across a fallow field.

Originally published in CRAFT, May 2023.

The story behind the story:

A few years ago I read a post in Kathy Fish’s newsletter “The Art of Flash Fiction” that addressed the use of first person plural to create a sense of community and common purpose. Around the same time, Jacqueline Doyle tweeted that she hoped to see more workplace-related CNF in the CRAFT submissions queue. The convergence of those two ideas sparked a vivid memory of a time in my twenties when I worked at a holistic living magazine devoted to encouraging people to make healthier, more conscious choices around food, lifestyle, and the environment. It was a vibrant, collaborative workplace that resisted the strict hierarchical structure of many American companies, which prioritize maximizing profits over all else. But as the journal began growing and expanding its reach, deep financial challenges loomed and the publisher decided to hire a team whose mandate was to turn the magazine around and make it profitable. The heavy-handed approach and massive changes proposed by the group in service of these goals alarmed the staff, who organized to push back. The experience made a deep impression on me and, inspired by the twin challenges posed by Kathy Fish and Jacqueline Doyle, I crafted “We Had Something Beautiful.”

Kathryn Silver-Hajo’s work appears in Atticus Review, Centaur, CRAFT, Emerge Literary, Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, Milk Candy Review, New Flash Fiction Review, New World Writing, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary, and others. Her stories were selected for the 2023-2025 Wigleaf Top 50 Longlists and nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing. Kathryn’s award-winning books include novel, Roots of The Banyan Tree and flash collection, Wolfsong. Her new collection Spinning: Love, Family, and Other Strange Entanglements is forthcoming in 2026. More at kathrynsilverhajo.com; facebook.com/kathryn.silverhajo; twitter.com/KSilverHajo; kathrynsilverhajo.bsky.social; instagram.com/kathrynsilverhajo