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"Sometimes Billy is an Elephant" by Francine Witte



Sometimes Billy is an Elephant.


Sometimes not. When Billy is an elephant, he is trunk and tusk and floppy ears, and he never forgets that he loves me.


Today he is not an elephant. I can tell by the splash of cologne wafting from his neck as he sits down to breakfast. A dab of  Dior Sauvage he knows I don’t like, that I prefer his usual flat gray scent. The cologne is light, but it fills the room above the scrambled eggs.


I’ll be working late tonight, he says. He reaches for the salt even though he knows how I hate it when he puts salt on whatever I am serving. Like it needs more flavor. Like I need more flavor.


I come from a family of no flavor and that’s just fine with me. My mother, a faded housedress and my father, the remote in his hand. Nothing different from day to day and they lasted 40 years.


When I met Billy, he reminded me of an elephant I had seen once at the city zoo. Billy was plod and lumber and so I assume he’d be a bland, saltless taste on my tongue.


I ask Billy what is keeping him so late these days and he acts like he doesn’t remember. Oh, the usual stuff, he says, but lots of it. I try not to look at Billy’s ear, where the corner is missing from when the last woman’s husband sliced it off because he caught her in bed with Billy.


I think how if Billy had been an elephant that time, if it had been one of those times he remembered he loved me, his ears would have been big enough, strong enough to flap that woman’s husband away, or better yet, the woman. 


So, when Billy reaches across the table, I think for a second that he might be going to stroke my hair, say something like, I have to work late, but don’t forget I love you. But the part of me that is an elephant, the kind that remembers everything, knows better. That, in fact, he is just reaching for more salt.




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.


1 Comment


CrystalTaylorSA
Jan 26

Loved this, as I often do with Francine’s work. The last line reminded me of that permanent memory my husband despises when I remind him of events from 20 years ago. Thank you for sharing this story, Francine, and Roi Faineant Press!

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