Hunger

WHEN I AM SIX

My father drives a spike through a bluegill’s skull.

“What’s it been eating?” I pipe.

“Dunno, pup,” he says, slicing the belly and reaching inside. I wriggle my fingers like they’re in there, too.

The organs are blue and purple. My father displays them to me in his cupped hands.

“Another fish!” I caw. “It was eatin’ another fish!” I pluck a minnow from the innards. It looks near-alive, like it could dart into the reeds.

“Why’d it do that?” I ask. “Why’d it take the bait if it wasn’t hungry?”

He shrugs, and filets the soft white flesh.

WHEN I AM TWENTY-FIVE

I sit on the windowsill in my apartment and watch tanks from my fifth-story perch.

Your cousin fell from a tree stand, my mother tells me over the phone. But we’re patching him back up.

She tells me about the hole in his belly where the bullet went through, about how his insides met the open air. They are blue and purple, I imagine, and very soft.

Health insurance? I ask.

Nah, she says. But I’m taking care of it.

Outside, tanks watch people march by in the thick Southern air. I sit in the window of my concrete cocoon.

WHEN IT IS NOW

I stand under the awning when the storm comes, watch it roll in across the plains, rain stained purple with sunset.

Isn’t it wonderful? I say to the sky. To leave things behind.

My toes curl around the edge of the decking; monsoon mist grazes my face. Meadow wrens sway on last year’s sunflowers, skeletons silhouetted like lightning across the sky.

Inside, a little robotic vacuum whirrs to life, ready to clean up the dirt and dust and detritus I will bring in with my bare feet.

I watch a grasshopper drown on the patio, its wings heavy with rain.