Filled Mouths Don’t Sleep at Night

i.

My grandmother and I are dizzy from the sun. She wears a turquoise house dress – the bottom hem moth-eaten and thin. I tell her I’m afraid to sleep. How my bed devours me whole. How my dreams turn thick & black. She doesn’t respond, and I repeat myself. I can’t move in my sleep, and I swear someone is there to pin me still. Sometimes, I feel hands on my wrists, a hint of sharp tipped nails teasing my pulse.

ii.

We don’t attend her funeral. It’s hot, and my mother is angry: something something they took everything something about disrespect something about thieves & what about my daughters? I remember the pink carpet in my bedroom. I remember the sun glaring on my TV. Back then, I obsessed over forensic shows, the discovery of fingerprinting, and cold cases. Somebody was always dead or close to it & here I am soft & sweating with carpet fibers leaving impressions in my thighs. I know I cried with my teeth sunk into a pillow. I thought all grief and agony worked that way, slightly hidden and always ready.

iii.

My grandmother can fall asleep swiftly. After a meal. During the intro to “Days of Our Lives.” Mid-sentence. Mid-story. I had already learned to make myself small & quiet, so I made patterns in the meshed light from the screen door. I was the first thing she looked for when she woke. Always the same question no matter the time of day – You hungry? I never said no. There was always food and unlike my mother she let me fill myself silly. Root beer floats, Brunswick stew with a spoon of sugar, fried catfish while we watched the stray cats scramble in the yard for scales & insides. This was how I was taught that worry comes later.

vi.

It’s witches coming to see you. Mean little things flying at night. We eat on the porch, our fingers slick with grease. I’ve trained my body to work against sleep. Sounding out words while I read next to my nightlight. Coloring with the blunt ends of crayons. Does your mama know? I eat and eat to hold the silence. My grandmother doesn’t give me a fix. If the witches only come at a certain time. If I should sleep with my head at the foot of my bed. When she falls asleep, I take her empty plate, throw the bones as far as I can.