You do not need your eyes to see
I can smell you. You are salt and vanilla even from here. You are decibels that spill out and thump up the trees. I would ask you to lower the volume, but I like to dance. I can hear you, you are tickle and tiny crunch. You are almost velvet. I can taste you, you are rainbow-y red, stripe-y and flowerwisp. Vibes and tremor and ding. If I blink, you’ll still be there.
Edges
Like the corner you swept me into. Shh. There was a love here. I cut myself on it. I bled myself on it. You were a goodbye before I met you. You were sharpened and granite and my fingerpads were waiting to touch. Not your fault. You were just beautiful. That’s not the part that cut me. What cut me was the corner where I was piled up. Don’t look. It will unbeautiful you to see how sharp your heart, your kiss, your words were. It just might decide you to stay.
Francine Witte’s latest publications are a full-length poetry collection, Theory of Flesh from Kelsay Books and the Blue Light Press First Prize Winner, Dressed All Wrong for This. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous journals, anthologized in the most recent New Micro (W.W. Norton) and her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind has just been published by Ad Hoc Fiction. She lives in New York City.
–Art by Dom Crossley — Artist Profile