On Cool Sparkling Mornings

The air called me out. The sun rays stretching over that grey mass of a mountain reach, bump into millions of leaves and land on the cement of Grandma’s porch.

Come outside.
The wet narrow rectangle of grass and alfalfa stretches far. Its borders are dirt roads, and then many other narrow rectangles of green with dirt roads. I will be out on these roads and under these leaves all day. [Go wake up Grandma, say yes to her offer of coffee.]

It’s a hot day. The shade is hot, the shade is welcome. Roads on both sides of the house are filled with round scallops of shade. These dark grey circles fill up the fine soft sand of the road that your feet find in between all the thumbtack rocks and goatheads.

I’m going to go get Pinkie. Toe heel toe heel ouch ouch oooo - cool shade soft sand finally. My eyes scan for that perfect path winding in between it all.

Pinkie’s back there now, I hope she comes out to talk. She’s always got a smile and a knowing in those eyes cause she has brothers. Maybe she will want to play.

Musky fresh smell of cottonwood bark rises and fills every inch of air under these branches. We cross the flat rough planks over the ditch and sink our teeth into sour green apple. I really want to go into her play house but somehow she never offers. It’s in the corner of a secret grassy room surrounded on four sides by tall straight trees.

We walk back to her house, the next second the arch of my foot burns with ant venom. Pinkie’s body is only a little bigger than mine but she manages to carry me on her bare feet her bones like stilts groan with the weight.

We enter the door framed by white stucco walls and enter the labyrinth of rooms. First the kitchen. I haven’t been inside often and eagerly take in their own brand of clutter and style. So this is what Mama & Daddy get to see at their parties. I am hurled through the sala, a long wide room with only low benches along the sides. So many doors—. She stumbles into the parents’ bedroom. Thick white carpet now a soothing reward for all this burden and back in another corner a door into a brimming cubbyhole, the bathroom. Aí, my aching foot! The ache bounces between the walls of my skin, spreading fire everywhere.

“Sit down here,” puffs Pinkie. And searching, she grabs the fat blue glass jar, reveals its creamy pungent fluff instantly and dabs some on. How can it be so cold? It hasn’t been in the refrigerator.

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