| By Emily Ross Hansen |
There is a tall church,
narrow and brick, the
one we spent our summer
nights, humid potlucks
waiting for the crisp
copper to breathe into
the grey fellowship hall.
The bleating choir, I stood
in back with my father,
watching the congregation
enter before service.
Their poinsettia collars, the
blue lace folding
itself across velvet pews.
Their outlines hewn
into the morning by
stained glass, rose and metal.
Frida, thin watering eyes,
donning the crimson
light of the glassy morning
put her arms around me and
when we hugged I knew her.
I knew her musk, the hymn
that hung around her neck.
Beth, her daughter, quiet
by her side, the smell
of baked beans and grass
painted across her skirt. Frida’s
frame curled around her
walker, grace in her multiple sclerosis.
Some Sundays we rode home
with them. The earth around their house
was soft and full. Their
pine stair leading to the second
story room where they lived.
Her husband left because
she got sick. In their small kitchen
Frida and I are bent over the metal table,
my bony youth and her preemptive
shudders, grinding pains. We shuck
corn, waiting for water to boil.
In this humid warmth that sings
of apples and clover,
she is my home, and from
the slat of cracked window
I breathe in the
first Carolina field I knew.
Emily Hansen can be reached at: [email protected].
