Uncanny Parrots

Dad lost another rattlesnake in the house after dinner: drawers and doors slid and slammed downstairs. We ignored this, we built thundercloud bubbles in the bath and they stung our open eyes as we rinsed our hair, we watched crevices beneath the sink and door and closet, and later our eyes remained wide until our sclera glowed moonlight and we mutually abandoned that shared floor mattress of ours, we mutely crept down rough, never-finished stairs.

Our shoes on the back porch had soaked too small in the last storm, and so our calloused soles bit into stinging gravel stones, they padded into the butter soft dirt on the road’s shoulder we traveled with your fingers clutching my ponytail for miles until the emus, we taunted them and their shadows kicked their fences and we shrieked in delight. Lights on the distant farm porch sparked and we fled, my flat chest tucked into your bony spine, filthy feet curled and staining your nightshirt, and you whispered stories about children like us plucked off dirt roadsides, and you fried me

pancakes, added grease stains and flour puddles in that cramped kitchen, and they tasted like bricks of burned batter.

He slept he slept he slept so

we kissed our squalling sister’s cheeks, we changed her diaper clean, we buckled baby into the car seat hanging from the cedar tree with nylon rope. Our knees linked together in the tire beside, we sneezed and spun ourselves sick, our noses blistered in the sun he woke with it setting dad caught tarantulas the size of his hands, they perched on his shoulders like uncanny parrots.

We made ice cream that night, vanilla; my spindle arms shook on the crank so we sat on the lid and we all shoved together and when we fell we laughed like

children