Today has a feel. Like the feel you get when the sun lowered with fishing wires is hushing up mothers in dish soap suds clinking their children’s dinner plates to make the house seem smaller and not so long ago. And during all of this I said “I am going to taylor potts’ house to play nba jam” and mother says “it’s 7:30 and time for bed.” makes me put on my fleece nightgown that flashes green lightning when you rub your cricket arms together under the covers because I don’t like to have my head exposed to see the dilute yellow glow seeping through the cloth window blinds. I am in bed then and say “I am beverly starns and I do not have to sit here with bees dying in my eyes.” That’s when I got up and snuck around mother at the sink looking out the window to the moon in the dryer-lint colored air after the saturation is gone from the lawn. On the way: father’s glasses. I wear them. the tile bends below me. Out the front door father is moving the garden hose eating a peanut butter sandwich without his glasses. His skin is white and my siblings are hiding in the tree whispering frosty finger-tipped stories to taylor potts. there is thunder on my nightgown moving in the holy spirit because that’s when beverly starns missed something from 7 years in bed before sundown while children are in the trees.
