1-10 | Francine Witte
1 is the loneliest number. So says Three Dog Night.
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Jenna hates the mirror anymore. Hears her bee heart buzzing for love.
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2 is the number for tango, apparently.
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Jenna meets Jeff at the high school reunion. He tells her he sat behind her in home room. What is it, 20 years ago?
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3 is a crowd.
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Jeff tells Jenna he’s married. He waits until after the scurried parking lot sex.
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4 is a whore.
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Jenna is okay with him being married. It means she doesn’t have to buy him a Christmas gift.
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5 is a hive.
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Jenna and Jeff see post-coital Larry and Lorraine three cars over. Also from home room. They high-five each other. They bee-buzz their hearts at each other.
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6 is for tricks, silly rabbit.
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They all check into a Motel 6. Six bucks a room like it was in the sixties. They are all looking for some kind of magic. They proceed to make each other disappear.
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7 minutes in heaven.
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Larry invites Jenna into the closet. To make out and stuff, he says. Jeff and Lorraine look at one another and shrug. They end up in the shower stall, making believe they are doing it in a waterfall.
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8 is late.
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Like Jenna’s fucking period. I thought this bullshit was over, she tells herself in the oh-he-never-called-again mirror.
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9 sounds like no in German.
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Maybe Europe, she is thinking. She pulls out an atlas book and looks at all the places she can dissolve into, cream-into-coffee style.
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10 and then.
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10 perfect fingers. 10 perfect toes. She has to learn to speak baby now. Learn the word for niblet toes, learn the word for buzzy beats that go so fast she almost always loses count.
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. Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ Editions in September, 2021. She lives in NYC.