“My dreams are humid from sun and water and heavy from cornbread and clabber milk”

I am adjacent to a mason jar on a silent front porch. Drowsy from sun, lulled by gnats and harmonized by the melancholy song of flies. I am identical to the dirt which patches my yard in inconsiderate intervals. My skin matches its hue, its texture, its dryness and keenness to scratches.

 I yawn, I stretch my balled fist to the sun and peer into its rays and hope I am sopped up by them and carried off by the clouds into heaven. Not so I may meet God but so I may be cool. The heat is foul. The heat is wet and it trickles down my throat and sucks my voice up into its pockets.

I am bow-legged and gapped toothed, but I am not ugly, because my hair grows long enough to press on Easter and tie ribbons on my Shirley Temples which Mama will fry into my hair with an angry iron that is hotter than hell, I imagine.

My stomach, hollow as doubt, begins to growl. And I reach for the fish Papa has caught. It is trout. I am sick of trout. Mama has dressed it in cornmeal and fried it hard and crackling in lard. I dab hot sauce on it. I stuff white bread in my mouth with the crackled fish. There is watermelon. There is punch.

There is only me, left on the porch at evening time. Everyone has gone inside. Mama has lain down with a headache. Papa is sleeping. And I am drawing pictures of hearts and polished mary-janes on wax paper pinned to the floor. All there is room left to do is sleep, and wonder if I will ever feel myself again.