Francine Witte
Daylight Savings
The clock strikes 2:00. Middle of the night refrigerator. The hum and the hum. On the table, plates with cake crumbs, half-filled glasses of wine. Dinner dishes still in the sink. The clock strikes 2:15. The whoosh of you leaving the table still so fresh in my ears. The thud of you closing the door as you left. The clock strikes 2:30. Your car rumbling out of the driveway. The clock strikes 2:45. Me waiting and waiting for you to come back. Me looking at the rest of my life. Me wishing to go back in time. The clock strikes 2:00.
Believing
When I am little, that is to say younger than now, that is to say before I knew how quick a face could disappear out of my life, that is to say quick as a lake reflection that ripples away if I try to touch it, when I am little, I believe. I believe my toys, my dolls with nylon hair, unbendable arms. I believe my mother as she tilts her face at the vanity mirror, lipstick, powder, rouge. She is playing dress-up for my father who plays office every day. Takes the toy train into a place he calls the city. When I am little, I ask my father where is the city and he tells me it’s where we saw the circus that time, and don’t I remember red-nosed clowns, the tall men walking on stilts? Is everything dress-up? I ask my father when I am little. This is years before he leaves us. Years before my mother tells me we have to live as if my father never happened. That it’s the only way we can go on. I believe her. I copy her motions, how she paints on a clown mouth, rouges her cheek, lifts herself on stilts of alcohol and other men. Each time now, now that I am not little any more, when a man walks away, I stitch up my heart, tell myself I’m whole, look at my reflection in the mirror as I practice a smile. Sometimes I even touch my reflection. I wait for it to ripple away.
Francine Witte’s flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is RADIO WATER (Roadside Press.) Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in NYC. Visit her website francinewitte.com.
