G. Taylor Davis

BLOOM

Brother plucked soil beneath his nails before the cauliflower was loaded. The pale-moon vegetable clunked into the bed of his pickup truck.

Mother prepared cucumber sandwiches: they were inexpensive and when served on bone china, made her feel like her mother was younger.

Father was big and red, with tar-shingle hair—he was the barn in which I slept on hay.

I wore sister’s old overalls in first grade; she was a tomboy who fell madly for the girl who sold thyme at the farmers market. Sister and I hunted crawdads in a nearby creek.

By the time the hair on my earlobes twitched, their love had been barbecued—my mother holding a book with one match missing.

Crawdads are elusive and quick when they fear being eaten. Like tiny Viking ships, they scurry toward the cloudiest mire when rocks are lifted from their succulent, red bodies.

When sister left abruptly for the city, she took nothing but burnt clothes and a suitcase full of cucumber on toast.
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G. Taylor Davis is from the milky way.