May is, frankly, fed up. Yesterday was the six-month mark where her relationships usually die. Today is six months plus one.
She wants to end this, but can’t break an old man’s heart, so she breaks some eggs instead. Only this time she’ll add something disgusting. Something that will curl his taste buds and force his tongue to say break-up words to her. She considers shoe polish, but that might make it murder.
December wasn’t always an old man to her. Started as her father’s best friend. Adventurer, took animal photos in Africa, had the whole Hemingway thing. Took her to places guys her age didn’t, took her home and swirled his tongue inside her. Sometimes she would pretend she was a felled gazelle and he was a lion gnawing and gnawing. That sort of thing.
December hadn’t been anywhere lately. Grown a little jowly, too. He stumbles into the kitchen. He has embraced the Hemingway part about drinking and his eyes are billowed and shot. He grabs her from behind as she’s stirring the pan. The eggs are bubble and pop. He unties her bathrobe and slides his hands over her. She is falling, falling, felled. What is six months plus two she thinks and doesn’t think anymore after that.
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ September, 2021. She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.