Maybe on a Thursday, maybe tomorrow. You will knock knock knock at the door. I will be afraid to open it, having grown scarce and wan like I have. I will be afraid of all the things that aren’t love.
I will be in the kitchen. It will be 10 am or midnight. I will be making cocoa. I will skim it with marshmallows, just how you liked. I still do lots of things you like. I brush my hair. I walk in straight lines.
You will come back to me and you will apologize for 123 and xyz. You will bring me sorry gobs of flowers. You will water them with your tears. I will tell you this time will be different. “I only opened the door,” I will say, “because I thought it was the newspaper,” though I read everything online.
You will walk right over to your favorite chair. The armrest remembers your hands which are calloused and rough and thrilling. I will tell you we are going to go slow. Glacial. We will melt so slow that even polar bears would have time to find safer ground.
I will serve you the cocoa I meant for myself. When we order a pizza, you will let me add anchovies the way you never would. You will give me the last of the wine. It won’t be till later, when the bed has swallowed me, when the pillows have stuffed up my ears, that you will turn to me, stroke back my hair, say how the marshmallows were really too sweet.
~
Francine Witte’s upcoming books are a flash collection, RADIO WATER, (Roadside Press, 2024,) and a poetry collection, Some Distant Pin of Light, (Cervena Barva Press, 2024.) She is flash fiction editor of FLASH BOULEVARD and South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC. Her website is francinewitte.com.