Francine Witte
Another Winter
And still she didn’t tell her husband about the child she had and lost while she was with the other man. She meant to many times, but her husband seemed so in love with her, always bringing her marigold and holly, and she was afraid to touch that. Afraid it would melt the winter in which they lived.
It had happened summers ago, gingham and swat flies, and a three-month business trip that kept her husband away and away. A night sweet with buzz and water lapping from a nearby stream. Weeks later, and weeks before her husband came home, the baby stopped growing. Just poured out of her one night bloodlike and that was that.
Tonight, she would tell her husband. He had said he’d wanted a child and why was she so afraid? She would have to tell him everything if they were to make a child. Maybe if he knew the truth, she told herself, he’d love her through it. He’d have to. The truth, she told herself, would coat his heart like the snow whitening their roof.
It was an icier winter than any she could remember. And she loved it this way, loved the way the air froze everything solid, the blue wind breath holding and holding. She would make him a feast of a dinner – honeyed lamb chops and cherry wine and sit him special by a crackle fire. He would listen and love her and take her into his arms.
She walked out of their house and down the slope hill to the market. She would ring the tiny bell over the door. Mr. Hobbs, flannel and woodsmoke, would wink and say, “oh yes, a feast for the lovebirds,” just like he always did every other time she was there.
On her way, she passed the stream flecked with snowy stones. passed by the branches sagged and bare, a tiny bird shivering on a limb. The bird, she thinks. is waiting for its mother, the one that left it behind.
She stops as dead as the air, drops to her knees and piles snow around her and shapes it into a snow child. It is tiny and perfect and yet she knows it will never grow, that it will shed layer by watery layer with the thawing of spring. She stands up and rather than go to the market she turns to go home. The branches swaying and bowing, the only thing beside her that is moving in the frozen air, the only sound the giant shush of it all.
Francine Witte
Francine Witte’s flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is RADIO WATER (Roadside Press.) Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in NYC. Visit her website francinewitte.com.