freck.le (frek.e) n. 1. The spots that appear on my cheekbones and shoulders when we play at the swimming pool in August, down the road from my house (turn right at the Kroger’s, keep going past the post office. Take a sharp left.), splashing in the water, swimming laps of it. Laughing and diving and my long legs kicking. I am just a child. 2. They are dark brown, sometimes on my nose, rust colored. My dark skin when the summer comes, the whole length of my arm dappled in sunburnt light. 3. I never asked my mother about the sun, about the way our Filipino skin could still flake off, turn dark, how the sun could crinkle it and leave its own leftover light all over my body. She never worried about it. Her skin was always perfect. (v) 4. This October afternoon, the windows open, the kitten climbing onto the couch to curl her body around, to press her claws into the blanket, to show the dips and dots and flecks of light inside her moonstone eyes. 5. The apartment, the tiled floor, the thousands of miles from me to you. What the sun does, in one long strip of yellow light, through the slats of shutters, the blinds, the softness of the room when you are gone. How lonely it is without you. 6. In moonlight, phosphenes bubble up in bright auras when I rub my eyes. They skip and jump, they fill in the empty space of all these missing years, like I can see you if I shut my eyes tighter, all one blurry mess, pooling up, spilling haphazardly into the depths of November. We are almost there. We can count each freckle if you want. One at a time. Pick them up off the ground like seeds to be planted. Fill jars with them, all together, take them outside. 7. Light up the night like fireflies blinking.

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Jacqueline Goyette is a writer from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in both print and online journals, including trampset, JMWW, Heimat Review, The Citron Review, Eunoia Review, and Cutbow Quarterly. She currently lives in the town of Macerata, Italy with her husband Antonello and her cat Cardamom.