It’s okay, I’ve dated worse.

Yes, I know he’s fictional. Yes, I know that’s a flaw.

But anyway, I’m dating Hamlet, and our first date is in Denmark because of the whole prince thing which means I have to lose my fear of flying. When I explain this to him, it’s kind of a waste as he’s never heard of an airplane.

Also, this correspondence takes a month what with us limited to seafaring vessels and all.

So finally, I’m in Denmark at a banquet table halfway through a swan, and he’s still deciding what to order.

It’s kind of thing with him, not being able to make up his mind. And I’m sitting here like an idiot because I had been warned about this. I read it all in ninth grade.

All about to be or not, which really comes down to a fear of commitment.

But it would be rude for me to get up now and wait for the next boat back to my life and all my friends who are trying to wean me off of fictional characters, and good luck with that.

The squire or page or gentlemen’s man is slipping in a plate of cookies, and I’m munching them nice and quiet as Hamlet is still trying to decide between the goose and the squab, and I figure that saying I think I’ve been poisoned would be a pretty good excuse from the table.

In the meantime, I’m waiting for Ophelia to traipse in any moment, soaking wet, waving her delicate finger and wanting to know if he’s planning to show up for their streamside picnic. Or not.

————

Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections, Café Crazy and The Theory of Flesh from Kelsay Books. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologized in the most recent New Micro (W.W. Norton) Her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind has just been published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her full-length collection of flash fiction, Dressed All Wrong for This was recently published by Blue Light Press. She lives in New York City.