by April Jones
Milk
Money
Thick
footsteps lead my father off
the
wooden porch, he’s going to the neighbors’
and
I am poking at a plate of beans and macaroni and
cheese,
staring at a green swing set. The fence door slams shut.
Today
I stole a quarter
before
lunch we go to the bathroom.
The
girls in one line, boys in the other. Mrs. Robinson
makes
us put our milk money on the brown table against
the
wall. Today I forgot my milk money,
when
I get back from the bathroom with clean hands
I
walk past the table of quarters and take one. One side silver
with
a head on it, the other side painted red.
A
little girl tugs
at
Mrs. Robinson’s pity
with
tears in her eyes.
Each
of us had to show our quarters,
I
showed the silver side.
I
put the chocolate milk on my tray
and
hand the lunch lady my
red-sided
quarter.
When
my father comes home
he
walks past me. When my mother
comes
outside to get my plate, one
of
her cheeks is red
like
my quarter.
Raspberry Bush
In
the heat of the afternoon, right off the school bus
she
will come and find me napping between these two,
tall
skinny trees. She finds my branches bare until she spills
her
secrets into my leaves. Her tear find my roots, her eyes
are
my night, my sun. Her secrets are bitter but I make them sweet
nestled
between tiny seeds, covered in juice. The same juice
that
will coat her puckered lips, and gives her the smile that she will take
with
her when she leaves me to my solitude between these two, tall
skinny
trees. I am a raspberry bush, easily forgotten, and the keeper of
little
girls’ secrets. Secrets that they keep hidden under their covers waiting
for
the night to end.
The Lord Calls an Unwilling Number
When
I was seven I put my cat in a Christmas popcorn tin,
one
of those big ones with five different kinds of popcorn,
she
meowed at tried to climb out, but I closed the lid
she
fought against the metal, scratching, meowing, and finally knocking it over
until
I opened the lid. Her pink nose dripped blood as she jumped out and hid
under
the bed.
The
cold water like metal around her ears and throat
his
hands around her neck pushing her head against the bottom of the bathtub
the
sounds of arms and legs thudding against the porcelain
her
hands trying to brace her weight, slipping under the water, his pressure
against
her body, the watery screams of her children in the doorway, her own
lost
in bubbles. When she comes out of the bathroom, wet and wide-eyed,
their
daddy stands up and leaves. When he leaves he doesn’t come home again
because
the Lord calls his number.
When
my cat comes out from under the bed she won’t look at me,
or
go near the popcorn tin covered in smiling snowmen. She can still feel my
metal
hands around her neck, and the smell of blood in her nose. She won’t
let
me touch her.
Mexico
Mayan
sounds like a breathy jungle song intertwined with the crisp snap
of
the end of my first love. He went to Mexico and I went to Idaho, somewhere
in
between I forgot all about my promise, and he forgot how to be kind. I can
still see
him
huddled under a plastic roof in a tin hut scribbling letters to me in the
pouring
rain
in a language I didn’t understand. I can still hear the sound of his laugh
lingering
thick
in the summer night as we made excuses not to go home. He gave me a ring,
I
gave him a reason to come home from the jungle and then a reason to leave me
forever.
He sends me a letter, I call, he sends daisies, I call, he stops answering, and
I
forget
why I loved him in the first place. By the fall we pretend to have forgotten
each
other but we will always be hidden inside the steady song of Tennessee
crickets
and humid summer nights. Parts of us buried in the Mayan jungle waiting
for
the rain.
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