I was waiting for my boyfriend, Gil. Waiting like always. This time. This time, he had promised. I would cling like a hungry baby. Meanwhile, time was moving its hands around. Clock wave, it occurred to me to say. Gil’s face nowhere to be seen in the clock face. Eyelash on the right eye that was two o’clock. Gil was a tick tock somewhere else. Had to be. Maybe his clock hands stopped so he’d have time to eat. Have to eat, right? Survival, right? Did he even need me to survive? Six o’clock mouth was all curly with words like you know the answer, you know the answer. Meanwhile five o’clock and seven pulling six into a knowing smile.
Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections, Café Crazy and The Theory of Flesh from Kelsay Books. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologized in the most recent New Micro (W.W. Norton) Her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind has just been published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her full-length collection of flash fiction, Dressed All Wrong for This was recently published by Blue Light Press. She lives in New York City.
Emerge Literary Journal 