Just him and me driving. Driving on a skinny road in a skinny town. Passing gin brave men. Passing sweat
laced women. With braids that buckle and eyes that squint.

A skinny town should carry smells of bread and horses. Horses made from hoof love. Bread made in a
kitchen full of flowers. Fresh picked. Fever few and fox tail that sulk in a vase like

sisters. We keep driving. Watching the wind ruin a wheat fields’ face, head lights willing a deer to stop
and stand stupid breathe stupid die stupid. We keep driving.

We keep the windows open. The radio singing about storm. The mosquitoes singing about blood. At
stops signs I let them suck.

When I was a child all I wanted was to turn good. Turn sweet like pancake on griddle. Chop all my hair
and leave it to rest in father’s shoe.

I loved my father and he loved my hair. Heavy as a quilt of feathers. Color of burning bush and name me
one girl who has never hidden

beneath long grass with books baseballs and boys. Boys with knees thinner than bean stalks. I knew one
with loud teeth, an appetite for rivers.

Water will not make me beautiful. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know the river in June is too tall to
enter and the flowers are too young to pick.

There are too many wings in the sky. Black coated birds. Red coated birds. And who does the sky belong
to anyway?

I asked the boy with teeth louder than candles. He sat beside his river and looked at the sky and the sky
looked right back at him. And that boy put his lips inside the shell of my ear and shouted

no one.