But all she got was a stupid cow.
So there she stands in the backyard, paintbrush in hand. Gotta make the best of things, she is muttering.
She stripes white paint on the side of the cow. The sirloin side. The part of a cow I have eaten hamburgers from.
The cow turns its still-cow head to her as if to say, paint me all you want, I’m still gonna moo and give milk.
Mama hears this cow thought loud and clear. She puts down the paintbrush and walks around to face the cow head-on. “Look,” she says out loud to the cow. “I could tell you stories of how pretty I was born. You can’t see it anymore.”
And then she says, “there was music in my fingers, that also got leaked out.”
Mama gives up and goes back to painting. You gotta give some things time, she is muttering. She decides if all else fails, she will have to take off her dress and show the cow the stripes that are painted on her own side.
Francine Witte’s full length book of flash fiction, Dressed All Wrong for This, has just been published by Blue Light Press, where it was the first place winner for the Blue Light Press Award. Her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind, is forthcoming from Ad Hoc Fiction. Her second full length collection of poetry, The Theory of Flesh, was recently published by Kelsay books. She lives in NYC.
Lost Balloon 