Pizza Hut, 1990
Outside, the rainstutter.
Inside, garlic waft, chatter
of highchair kids. The waitress
staccato, you tapping your fingers.
Say it, I say to rain outside, my
voice bouncing back off the tinted
window glass. The stop of the drops,
the start again. Just fall, I tell it,
just come in one steady stream,
like a river, like Mountain Dew
fizzing out of a soda machine,
like a man who doesn’t love me
anymore.
*
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). She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She is an associate poetry editor for Pidgeonholes. Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ Editions in September, 2021. She lives in NYC.