The acorns confetti the backyard like heavy pepper in the side of our Alabama hill, and I’m going there, where the trees go bare, where the creek and shifting leaves beg hush.
My daddy has a graceful red horse that runs (thunders) along side our van every time we start up the driveway. She runs, and her hair moves like one of those scenes that passes through your mind when you take a last breath.
We’ll take 5-minute walks 15 times a day. Horses and barns and acorns, allergies berzerk, tears coming out in happy stings.
But going home isn’t dramatic. It’s still just mostly huddling around the television and eating until we hate ourselves. My boys, though, will touch land that is theirs, taste a hint of milk and honey.
Here at the apartments, they don’t belong, can’t dig or climb or throw. Pray that the bottom of my Mama’s tub is full of dirt every night we’re there. Pray we smell sweet feed, open dusty hymnals and sing, “Flee as a Bird to Your Mountain.”
Thanksgiving time, I’ll write on paper with a cheap pen, and I’ll glory in boonies away from the internet, and I’ll wait until the dishwasher’s running to take a shower, and I’ll have a bite of the world’s best banana pudding just for you.
RunaMuck in your Reader?
After the eggs and maybe cinnamon toast, as soon as we can get something pulled over our heads, we go outside. You, my little sister, follow me toward the barn, but I remember and say, “Let’s go back in and get it!”
At the foot of the bed, the E Encyclopedia opens to “Egyptians.” We get the shivers, crouch in the floor so they can’t look at us through the window. I see them out of the corner of my eye. You, too; we hide.
Leap-frog girl to girl into the hall, feeling every low angle of the house, we peel off the back porch, over work boots. Behind the tree is Ra. Hear the rustle, sun god in the leaves. Chills at the base. You look afraid. We feel the eye whirl in, cold air, the zoom of being known.
Cats belong to them, everywhere. Run to the oak tree! We squat down and look on all sides. You whisper, “out there at the road, they’re gone now.”
So we run to the flat rock in the yard. Wide open, our toes wet and crushing last violets. We are millionaires bashing rocks for quarts. All the jewels.
Tell me now. My name is Jade.
What do you want your name to be?
***
Many days it’s as though I’ve forgotten how to play, so I took a minute to remember it here thanks to Story Bleed, celebrating #GoGoDayofPlay. Can you tap back in, share a memory of play?
RunaMuck in your Reader? Tagged as:
invisible,
make believe
