Francine Witte
Again, Inside my Bones
I start to imagine how the river must feel, having
no other goal but the sea, how it cannot aspire
to be, for example, a rock, and a star can only burn
so long, before it explodes and then dies. And what
if the sky itself is just a giant wall, and all of those stars
we think are alive are nothing but paintings you buy
at the airport motel, and the whole universe is nothing
but a house, the only house you can afford, its value
dropping even now. And maybe your own heart
is tender, yes, but flat as a paper valentine, dragged
from one lover to the next, from now until you
yourself explode and die or become like one
of those boats you watch on the river fading into
the ocean, under the sky, and under the stars.
Bio
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) was published by ELJ September, 2021. She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.