Francine Witte
The Moon is Still the Moon
Even when the drunken husband tries to drag the moon inside. Even when the moon doesn’t fit through the door. Even when the wife wouldn’t believe it anyway. Even though she believed it when they were young. Even though she saw the trouble. How could she not with all of that light? Even with the slurry phone calls, broken dates. Even when the moon shrunk down to a sling. Even tonight, when the full face of the moon looked square at the husband, I can’t help you anymore. Even with the seashells left behind by the pull of the moon.
The Map of Things
From above – Mountain range, the earth shrugged up, veiny rivers through the body land. Trees like green puffs that flurry at the slightest wind.
From eye level – Face after face coming at you. The unseen that happens after the corner. A child on a tricycle going round and round and round.
From below – No one draws it from under. And I don’t mean a map of the stars. I mean the floor of the earth, somehow seen through the magma and goo. You might see the black square of building squat, the determination of shoes leaving footprints that, in the end, are all we leave behind.
From eye level – Face after face coming at you. The unseen that happens after the corner. A child on a tricycle going round and round and round.
From below – No one draws it from under. And I don’t mean a map of the stars. I mean the floor of the earth, somehow seen through the magma and goo. You might see the black square of building squat, the determination of shoes leaving footprints that, in the end, are all we leave behind.
Francine Witte’s flash fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. She has stories upcoming in Best Small Fictions 2022, and Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton.) Her recent books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (ELJ Editions,) Her latest book is Just Outside the Tunnel of Love (Blue Light Press.) She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.