TFR Home Page | Contents | Prev. Page | Next Page | Comments |
By Anita Jay Durkin Her pudgy fingers clutching rough wood posts three shades darker than her brown ring curls, she peers over the fence with enormous eyes, tilting her head and skewing her smile. She is standing on an overturned crate she found empty in the chicken coop, the coop itself empty, and now the box becomes the several inches more she needs to peer beyond the gate, her bird bone body smaller than her age suggests. Wearing the white dress Mama made before Pa came, she knows it won't be long before she wears again the dress to poor man's church and cross. For now, her fingers are adorned with splinters she accepts with minor flinches, the twitch of shoulders I can see from on the sloping roof where few white birds beat fragile wings, where she might stand when I have gone and climb or jump or fall back down. © Copyright 2004, Anita J. Durkin, All Rights Reserved. |
© Copyright 1997, 2024, The Fairfield Review Inc., All Rights Reserved.
Document last modified on: 09/28/2004