Seed
by Tia Prouhet

I dream of tree houses, the two of us in a low ceiling room with brown bread and thick plastic cups of sugary tea. I snuck an extra spoonful, now it is just right. We leave the tea alone too long and it fills with ants, which I drink anyway.

 

You laugh while I spit and spit.

 

Sometimes we are children in hand-me-down corduroy.

Sometimes we are too large for the space, huffing and elbowing one another.

Sometimes you are sleeping and I am cold.

 

 

Spring

We jump off window ledges, the neighbor boy and I. We fall through two feet of clouds and dragons before we land softly on our feet in clover and crab grass. The window has been broken a long time. The glass has been sprayed across the grass so long it doesn’t glitter anymore. We jump, the neighbor boy and I, holding hands to steady ourselves.

 

It will be a long fall, I say.

It will be a hard landing, he says.

 

My hand scrapes the brick window ledge, the side of my palm, fleshy and soft. The neighbor boy looks at the pink showing through. No blood, keep jumping, he says.

 

I push him and run away crying. Can’t he see that I’m leaking out? The window has defeated me. The brick has defeated me.

 

TIA PROUHET is enamored with bees and thinks you should be too. She lives in the armpit of Texas where she works three jobs to support the cost of air conditioning. She ignores this blog: thecracksinme.blogspot.com.

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