The Dust Bowl - Olivia Murphy-Major

The Dust Bowl

by Olivia Murphy-Major

*This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The Warbys were a family of four. The mother of the two boys, Iris Warby, whom my own mother had invited over for a drink once on a late, summery afternoon, had insisted she raised them right. “My boys,” she said, “they are good in their very bones, you can just see it.” Did she know, I thought then, that they lit fireworks in the driveway? That they bullied the dog by pretending to throw things, and letting it run and sniff around as they laughed?

Their names were Simon and Calvin. Simon and I went to the town highschool, though we never spoke. He was two grades above me. Calvin was in middle school. Mrs. Warby, at the beginning of the summer, upon noting the persistence of knotweed on their property, had made a project for the boys to get rid of it. They were sent out into the yard, even on the hottest days, to dig up and snip away the plants with shovels and big garden shears. I often watched them from the porch. I would sit on the swing and pretend to read my mother’s magazines, kept in a basket beside the wicker chairs. I watched the juice from the plants catching the sunlight, running down the severed stalks as they beheaded each one. Calvin, the younger one, sat on the ground and pretended to get the plants up by the roots. He barely pried at the dirt as he squinted up into the trees, or watched his brother, who dug steadily all through the afternoon. The dog would sniff around sometimes, or lay in the dirt piles they made. “He isn’t much help!” Their mother once yelled from the yard—if any of us were sitting on the porch, she assumed we were a kind of audience–and then she continued to strut through their progress in a large sunhat, like a rooster with a bright red comb.

One morning, I was watching them out of the bathroom window as my mother prepared to cut my hair. I wanted a new, short bob, one that I’d seen worn by a girl on the cover of a magazine at the grocery store. I thought it might make my neck look longer, more elegant—like a ballerina’s. This was during the summer I turned fifteen, when the Warby family moved into the house beside ours.

“Alice, it’s like a rat’s nest here, in the back,” my mother said, tugging with the wide-tooth comb.

“Mm-hmm.”

“You do have some control over it, you know. Just once in the morning and once at night.”

“No one sees it in the back. It only gets a little tangled.”

My mother had been cutting my hair in front of the bathroom mirror since I was little. I loved her gentle fingers on the nape of my neck, her hands pressing the side of my face so I would turn this way or that, the sound of the kitchen shears snipping, and the feeling of the whispers of hair grazing my shoulders as they fell. I liked to focus all of my senses on these feelings, and for this reason, I did not stare into the mirror. It distracted me to watch my mother’s focused face, which was often pinched and ugly, with all of her features scrunched together and her lip stuck out. This was unsettlingly separate from her normal face. She was elegant, with pointed features and dark, deep eyes. I would often associate this ugly face of hers with that mirror, because it was the only place I ever saw it—for other things she focused on, like mending my clothes, it seemed to require less concentration, and the only visible consequences were a furrowed brow and a glassy stare.

My mother was humming now, lost in the rhythms of snipping and tousling. Outside, the lilacs drooped, their clusters of petals heavy with rainwater. The Warby boys were visible, digging up the knotweed that crept from the treeline into their lawn. The morning’s rain had made the earth softer, easier to pierce with shovels.

Mrs. Warby’s efforts against the plants seemed extreme to my mother, but I understood. There were many structures, formerly houses, which I had seen as we drove through winding country roads, tucked into clearings between trees. These houses had been broken, collapsed, grown through by vegetation. Some were enclosed entirely in gnarled masses of green, with boards sticking out here and there, like long arms reaching from a cage. I imagined the families once living in these houses, picturing their final days—that perhaps they woke up one morning and shuffled through a hallway suffocated by thick green leaves, had to wrestle a drinking glass from the grasp of a curled fern, and decided enough was enough. I imagined they had packed their bags, and drove off in a hurry, leaving the plants to finish their work of thickening and dismantling. I thought of the poison parsnip, which grew along our driveway with high waving heads of yellow. How quietly alive they all were—weeds growing through cracks of pavement, moss sprouting through dampened porch floorboards, honeysuckle and ivy climbing the lattice.

My mother, unlike most mothers I knew, did not want anything to do with the garden, with the rusty spade, or growing flowers or vegetables. What my mother did love was organising—there was always a mess for her to tend to, to fuss over for hours or days. A pile of accumulated mail, the hall closet coats and boots, the cans of soup and beans in the kitchen pantry. There were a few things I wished she'd never touch, never try to reorganise, but couldn't tell her for fear of her saying, “Oh! Yes, I never thought of it, yes, it has to be done.” One of these things was the junk drawer, which had the delightful smell of pencil shavings, wax, old matches, and Elmer's glue. Another was the piano bench with all of the old theory books from when I had lessons. The books were filled in with shaky pencil drawings of treble clefs and crude illustrations of my music teacher which, thankfully, she never found. My closet, too, which had a large blue envelope with all of the small change I had, along with every note I had ever received. When I wanted to feel loved or special I read these. The coins made it feel heavy, and made a tinkling noise when I took it down from the shelf as they slid around inside. Most of the notes were birthday and Christmas cards from my grandparents, aunts and uncles. Some were old valentines I received in the first and second grade: little pink and red cards with expired candies still attached. They said things like “I like your smile” or “can I hold hands?” The old valentines still held some sort of flattery.

That afternoon, I rode my bike to work. My haircut left the back of my neck and shoulders newly bare, and the wind made me feel light. When I arrived, the rush at the Dust Bowl was just about to begin. The diner sat between The Luna, an old movie theatre, and a Mobil gas station with a flickering blue and red sign that lit up the booths through the windows at night. On weekdays, high schoolers and middle schoolers came from the Catholic summer school down the road. You could see them coming from the window beside the dishpit, a long line of grey uniforms hauling backpacks. They ordered grilled cheeses, malt milkshakes, slices of apple pie, waffle fries served in paper baskets whose corners were soaked dark with grease. There were hot fudge sundaes, burgers, bottles of coke, slices of black forest cake, and sandwiches served with a crisp, cold pickle. Slushies were popular this time of year in the heat, and the machines whirred as they churned granules of syrupy ice in vibrant colours. There were arcade games past the booths: Space Invaders, Pacman, and a Danish pinball machine that rattled and sang a song no one could make sense of. The owner, Clyde, had inherited The Dust Bowl from his father, and often sat on a high stool in the glow of one of the arcade machines, clicking and swearing as the day went on, as customers came and went.

I began the opening tasks—switching on the lights and ceiling fans, checking the stocks of napkins, ketchup packets, and sodas, and putting the ice cream scoops in pails of hot water.

“Hope you’re not monkeying around back here,” Clyde said in his low, hoarse voice. I jumped, surprised.

“Good gracious, girl. The look on your face! Maybe you were monkeying around.”

“No sir, just unwrapping everything. I didn't think you were here.”

“I move quiet for a man with a tummy like mine, I know,” he said, chuckling, and patted his stomach. He sighed, lumbered over to the other side of the counter, and sat down.

“Would you fix me a milkshake, doll?”

I nodded, finishing what I was unwrapping and setting it down.

“Chocolate?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

We were silent awhile, except for Clyde’s hands tapping on the counter.

“Your old lady must be proud of you, the way you work, huh?”

“Sure is. She likes having me out of the house, too. Says it’s good for me to be doing something. People skills are important, is what she says.”

I turned on the blender. I did not want to talk. I liked having this time, before we opened, to be in my head, to do my tasks carefully and quietly. It was during this time yesterday I tried to savour all the bliss of summer, to list smells, tastes, and sights. Hay bales wrapped in white plastic, like giant marshmallows, froth on the tops of milkshakes, sweat on the glasses. This time of year, the days felt like a smudge in memory; a mirage of heat and summer colour. The green of the trees, the blue-grey of river water, purple clovers rippling in the fields. Sounds of peepers, bicycle bells, the cash register drawer ringing as it opened.

In the evening, a couple came in from The Luna.

“Table for two. And is there somewhere I can throw these out?” the man said. He held up a crumpled popcorn bag and an empty soda cup. The woman’s eyes looked glazed over, and she was smiling. I imagined her vision was still adjusting from the darkness of the theatre. Her lipstick was spread all along the outskirts of her mouth, and there was some on her chin. The man had it too, all over the space above his lips, a smear on the tip of his nose. They hung onto each other. They tried and failed to wipe the lipstick off each other’s face, then crumpled into one another with laughter. The woman stroked his neck, whispered in his ear, tucked her fingers in his jacket collar. He could not take his eyes off her. As they walked to the booth I pointed to, they kept their faces close, and the man did not tear his gaze from her profile; his head was cranked to the side to look at her.

The woman had rich, chocolate-coloured hair cut short, soft eyes and high cheekbones. She looked right through me when she ordered the milkshakes, but I hung on, my gaze lingering on her face after I'd written their order. I had a desperate longing to be noticed by her. There was something about women like her that made me want to be seen. I wanted her to say something superficial, to compliment one of my features or accessories, I wanted her to speak to me in a sweet, but not domineering way. How delicate and rare that was, that peculiar acknowledgement of another woman’s grace or desirability or potential to possess these things. And how unglamorous I felt, hoping, fully consciously, for this acknowledgement, being denied it, and shuffling back behind the counter to sweep the crumbs away from the griddle station. I busied myself with the scooping of ice cream and pouring of milk while I stole glances at them. I watched the way the woman touched her slender fingers to the table as she spoke, the slow, seductive blinking of her eyes, the way she tilted her head to listen to him, the way, unlike most girls I had observed at the diner, she did not fiddle or fuss with her jewellery, or pick at the skin around her nails.

The bell of the door rang and I felt a gust of cool summer-evening air. Simon Warby walked through, careful the door didn’t slam behind him; he guided it closed with his hands.

“Hello,” he said as he saw me, coming over and sitting on one of the stools, right in front of the blender. I nodded at him and smiled.

“I’d like one of those, please,” he said, pointing at the shakes. He was bouncing his leg on the ground, it made his whole body shake. “And pickles, if you have them. Those ones you put with the sandwiches. Can I have a basket of those? Maybe three or four?”

“Yeah, I can do that, just one second,” I said, slipping out from behind the counter to bring the couple their milkshakes.

I walked to the back and untied my apron, feeling my waist relax into the new space. I didn’t need to wear it; it was almost closing time. I unlatched and pushed the cooler door open and propped it open with a box of sodas. The lightbulb had gone out, and Clyde still hadn’t replaced it. I found the pickle bucket and snapped off the lid, plunging my hand into the cold brine, and felt around for one as if grasping blindly for a sea creature in a dark fish tank.

“Thanks, Alice,” Simon said when I set the pickles on the counter in front of him. He looked down at them and twisted his mouth up to one side, furrowing his brow.

He looked up at me.

“Now, this might sound weird, but I’m wondering if you could get me a cup of pickle juice, too. I’ve been craving it all day. Just a dixie cup full? Could you?”

He gave a wide smile, gritting his teeth, and crossed his fingers on the counter.

I squinted my eyes at him.

“Sure. It’s just that now I have to take a second trip back there, just cause you had to work up the courage to ask for a cup of pickle juice.”

He laughed.

“I just wanted to make sure the boss wasn't around. I wasn't sure if you were supposed to give out cups of pickle juice willy-nilly.”

He picked up a pickle and let it drip onto the wax paper in the basket.

When I came back, Simon was bouncing his leg more furiously. I could hear him mumble as he crouched over a piece of paper. I got closer and set the cup of brine in front of him, which was bright green with a sheen of oil glimmering on its surface. He was writing on a crossword puzzle torn from the newspaper, with deep creases from being folded to fit in his pocket.

“A sailor’s greeting…” he murmured, taking the cup of brine and swallowing it all at once.

“Ahoy,” I said.

“Oh, dammit. I would’ve gotten that, if you’d just given me a second.”

He pencilled in the letters, shaking his head.

“God that’s good,” he said, pointing to the empty dixie cup. He wiped his forearm across his mouth. I noticed black spots on the side of his palm where the newspaper letters had transferred their ink.

“And that one,” I said, leaning over the paper, “four down, is divorce.”

Simon brought his hands up and covered his ears.

“La la la la la! No more!”

I turned to get the ice cream for his milkshake.

“How about this one, Miss Alice, queen of the crossword,” he cleared his throat, “In a duel, cowboys walk blank.”

I hesitated and poured the milk into the blender.

“Twenty paces.”

He looked down and counted the boxes under his breath, then let out a long, high whistle.

“No flies on you.”

When my shift was over, I rode my bike home, passing all the usual landmarks that seemed more obscene at night, like the graveyard. High schoolers and graduate bums drank there. One pine tree stood tall among all of the crooked stones, American flags, and bouquets of plastic flowers sunk in the ground. They would sit with their bodies leaned against the tree’s wide trunk, or up a ways in the branches. If I was lucky I’d ride past just as a car illuminated it with their headlights, and I could catch a glimpse of the cigarette smoke in the air, the kids with their spines draped along the lowest branches, letting their arms hang down, or sprawled out on the grass. This glimpse flashed like a photo across my vision, and as I rode home I tried to pin down every detail, the colours of their clothes, the way they sat, who might have had their arm wrapped around whom.

After the first visit, Simon came to The Dust Bowl routinely during my shifts after his mother dismissed him from the day’s work of digging. He’d come in having ridden his bike, the hollows of his collarbones glistening and the sweat soaking through his shirt in a long oval at the centre of his chest. He never asked me to give him the pickles or drinks for free, as most friends or acquaintances of mine did. He dutifully counted out the due amount in quarters, nickels, and dimes, spreading them out on the counter and always counting aloud, a second time, under his breath. I was sure whatever allowance his parents gave him was being eaten away by these frequent visits, but still, I did not offer him food for free. It would have changed something between us, and I was aware I would have been giving something away.

The way he carried himself around me became more playful. All of his limbs and facial features participated in making known whatever it was he tried to convey. Simon could impersonate nearly any farm animal with shocking accuracy. He could also imitate the round, sorrowful sounding meow a cat made when it was stuck somewhere, or had been coaxed into a crate to be hauled to the veterinarian. He did an impression of Gunther Lowry, one of the carnies who was hired at each of the summer fairs. Gunther had a lazy eye and spoke with a drunken southern drawl; he talked about his distaste for all of the teenagers with belly rings, and warned us against wasting our tickets on certain booths like “Knock ’Em Down.” Gunther swore the pins were made of steel and had been glued down for extra measure. Simon would cross his eyes and mock, “The thang is, yew can’t knock ’em down!”

We never thought to share stories or laughter outside of The Dust Bowl; it seemed a strange idea to see one another at our houses, which were, after all, right beside each other. In that realm, we only briefly acknowledged one another by waving from our respective windows or porches. The Dust Bowl was the perfect place—separate enough that we had independence; in my role as a worker and his as a customer, and we were not made childish by the homes of our parents, with their gaudy bric-a-brac and personal questions our mothers might call out from the top of the stairs. Our relationship took shape in a world of its own, that, more importantly, felt more mine than his. I realised this one night after we readied ourselves to leave together, to ride our bikes home. First, I was struck by a sudden discomfort when he got up from his stool and I was no longer looking down at him from where I stood behind the counter. As we stepped outside, into the brisk, surrounding dark, a feeling whipped through me, a warning, a feeling of boundaries loosening, becoming harder to locate and outline. It was as if a blinding-white carpet of snow had fallen over the structure we’d built out of what we knew of each other.

One night, we sat on the curb outside The Dust Bowl. There were no customers and dusk was settling in—the traces of pink that were woven through the clouds had disappeared, leaving an even colouring of deep blue. Crickets were chirping. We watched a crow hopping in front of us on the pavement. It cocked its head so that it watched us with one eye, only its profile was visible, the sloping beak glinting with light. I studied its eye, which was glassy and black, a dark jewel. I could not tell precisely where it was looking.

I turned and looked at Simon's profile. We were so close our legs touched, just barely, and I breathed in his smell of bar soap and a clean kind of sweat. His complexion was softened and almost glowed, washed in faint yellow light from the diner windows. The definition of his jaw and cheekbones were blurred, the eyelashes casting long, sweeping shadows down his face. I thought of kissing him on his neck, or pressing my cheek against the warmth of his skin. I imagined that in the late-summer humidity it would feel as if my skin were melting into his.

“Crows are smart,” Simon said. The bird fluttered its shiny wings, startled by his voice, but kept its footing.

“Yes,” I said, “I heard they make trades. For tinsel and things to make their nests.”

Simon was silent, but held out his fingers to the crow, rubbing his thumb against his index and pointer finger.

“You’re smart,” Simon said, retracting his hand, “I like that about you.”

He turned to look at me. I kept my gaze fixed on the crow, who was now preening, and moved its feet so that the talons made scratching sounds on the pavement.

“Sometimes I’m not sure. Sometimes I worry about school getting harder and people being smarter. And there’s so much school left.”

I turned my head and met his gaze.

“I don't think you need to worry about all that,” he said, “I think you’ll only get smarter.”

His eyes were large and shining.

“Bright as a dollar,” he said, smiling, his teeth a brilliant white.

He looked at me and traced his gaze along all of my features. I felt a heat building in my chest. I looked down at the backs of his hands, his bare forearms. The veins rose up in curving lines against the skin, spreading out into winding paths. The look of it reminded me of bare branches sprawled against the sky.

“I was thinking we could go swimming tomorrow afternoon, in the river,” he said, “if it’s nice out.”

There was a river that backed each of our houses, down in the acreage of woods.

I paused, still looking down at his hand. “Okay.” I said, “Sure, if it’s nice. I think it's supposed to be.”

The sound of wheels on pavement shook my thoughts away. The crow began a strange, hobbled run before taking flight. Now the parking lot was suffused with bright yellow light from the car that rolled in. It parked adjacent to us, and my mother got out.

“Hi, Alice,” she said, walking over as she arranged her purse and jacket, draping them over one arm.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh. Hello, Simon,”

“Hi, Mrs. Reilly, how are you?”

Simon stood, and I followed.

“Oh, I’m well, thanks.” My mother was looking through the diner windows, past us, and combed her fingers through her hair.

“I just thought I’d surprise you. Maybe have a snack. Then I can drive you home, sweetheart, when you're done with everything,” she said, placing her hand on my arm, the bracelets on her wrist jingling. “It’s getting too cold tonight for you to ride your bike, that's just what I was thinking.”

Inside, we sat in one of the booths, Simon and I on one side, my mother on the other, facing us. She held a steaming cup of coffee. I rolled the bundles of silverware and napkins for the next day. My mother asked Simon how his folks were, how the digging was going, why they needed to be out there all day, wasn’t it tiring?

“They’re good. Thanks for asking. And the digging is fine. My mother thinks we will lose steam if we stop.” Then, he switched into a high voice with clipped pronunciation, just like his mother’s.

“Now, Simon, think,” he said, gesticulating with his hands. “Does a train stop every ten feet? No, now does it? That would be foolish, because then it would have to get up the power to go again. It would be a waste.”

“You sound just like her,” I said, and nudged his arm, smiling.

My mother gave a perfunctory nod. She took out her cigarettes and pinched one between her lips. She struck a match on its box and lifted it, cupping the flame, though there was no wind in the diner. Her face was lit in a circle of orange at the centre, making high arched shadows of her brow bone. She shook out the match with a delicate flicking of her wrist, and I watched the flame turn to a trail of smoke. She dropped the dead match into her coffee mug.

Taking a drag, she asked, “And what’s your subject in school?”

The smoke seeped out of the corners of her mouth as she spoke.

“My… my subject?”

“Your best subject. In school.”

Simon had tucked his hands under his legs.

“Oh. Yes, uh, English, Mrs. Reilly. English is my best. I’m good at gym too but I don't like it as much. But the coach tells me I’ve got a golden arm for dodgeball,” Simon said, his voice trailing into a laugh.

My mother rested her elbows on the table.

“Hm. Well, dodgeball won’t earn you a living. So, thank God for English.”

Simon’s voice seemed to get caught in his throat, and he made a noise like a bullfrog croaking.

I watched my mother’s eyes shift as she drew her brows together, craning her neck to look past us.

“Who is that, out there?” she asked. “Who is that by the car?”

Simon and I whipped our heads around. There were a cluster of people around my mother’s car, who, when they saw us looking, yelled and scattered, mounting bikes they’d laid on the roadside. I saw them get smaller, before being swallowed by the dark of the road, out of reach of the diner lights. We all got up from the booth.

The tires were full and intact. There were no broken windows or new dents. But the windshield was covered in a greasy film.

“Hmph,” Simon said. He leaned his hip against the front of the car and ran his finger across the glass. “Butter. Butter on the windshield.”

He shook his head as if he were an old man, recognizing this trick from decades past.

“Jesus Christ, is this really that funny to them? Very clever. Oh-so clever,” my mother said, pivoting to flick her cigarette into the bin by the diner door.

“Can you get me some dish soap?” Simon asked, looking at me. “That's all that’ll work.”

The light from the gas station sign lit up his face in blue and red, and the darkness coming from the other direction made a web of shadows. I could see a smile forming on his face, and I nodded, turning away to fetch the soap from inside. My mother had her arms crossed and was staring up at the sky.

My mother helped me put things away while Simon scrubbed at the windshield. Together we wrapped the desserts in cellophane, and began switching off the appliances.

“Is he sweet on you?” My mother asked, tipping her head to the direction of the parking lot.

I shrugged.

“Maybe. He just comes in a lot now. We like talking.” I was looking down at the glare in the cellophane, focusing on not smearing the delicate frosting work on a slice of carrot cake. I did not want to look at her.

She did not say anything. Instead, she set her plate of brownies down on the counter, a bit too hard, so that it clattered.

“Why don’t I go wait in the car? Simon must be almost finished. He can help you with the rest of this.”

“Oh—sure, okay. I won’t be too long.”

My mother nodded and set her empty coffee mug down beside me, so that I could wash it. There was a lipstick print, neat as a stamp, on the lip of the cup.

***

To get to the river, we had to take the long, winding path through a slope of overgrowth. Simon held aside the thistly arms of raspberry bushes for me as we walked through. As we got closer to the river, I saw rusted car parts half-submerged in earth, their bits of chrome gleaming in the late-afternoon sunlight, dented and bent. I watched the back of Simon's head; the perspiration on his neck and head had darkened his hair.

We arrived at the bridge. The river mud smelled sulphuric, and was worsened by the heat of the sun. Through the few trees rooted on the riverbank, I saw the water, high and fast from recent rainfall. The current was swollen and opaque: clay-coloured. I looked at it and shivered, thinking how cold it would be. I hesitated, then stopped short.

Simon noticed the halt of my footsteps and turned to face me.

“Nope,” I said, looking around, not at him. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to swim.”

The water was loud.

“Oh, come on, Alice."

I shook my head as I pressed my lips firmly together, finally resting my gaze on his face. He began to bob his head and make chicken noises, angling his arms into wings.

“I don’t want to. I’m going home,” I said.

As I turned to walk back up the slope, he caught me by the arm, then bent and lifted me from the legs and slung me over his shoulder. I yelled and began to push whichever way I could to get down, fearful that he would carry me over the bridge and I might fall. I felt a sharp pain on my outer thigh, bucked my body because of it, and fell to the ground. I recoiled as fast as I was able, shuffling backwards like a crab, farther up the bank, before stopping to catch my breath. A silence settled in, widening a gulf between us. The river rushed and gurgled. I looked down at the bitemark and traced the outline of the circle it had made with my finger, noting the imprint of his slanted top tooth. I could not look at him, I was embarrassed. Later, I would regret not saying something cutting, but all of that was lost to me. I sat there, as he stood still, looming and breathing, the two of us on the river bank, which had now become a stage.

“I—oh, god, I’m sorry, I was joking, I didn't mean for it to be so hard. Can I see? can I-–”

He began to reach out for me.

I turned before he could get close and sprung up into a run. I ran up the slope and through the tree line, the air lashing my face, obscuring the sounds of the current and Simon yelling after me. I came upon a wall of brush. It was dense with knotweed, but it made an opening for me—I imagined the stalks bowing aside and bending back into place after I was in. Then I was enclosed in the warm, close scent of green, of raspberry bushes and their fruit spoiling in summer heat on the branches, growing soft and fragrant. I breathed hard and stood there, looking around at the tangle of brambles with shiny brown thorns, sharp and delicate as thumbtacks. The honeysuckle was in full bloom, and its green vines wound around the raspberry branches. The petals kept their rounded shape in the shade. Waxy orange interiors peeked out from the petals, the long filaments reached from each flower’s centre.

I raised my leg up closer to my face and looked down at the mark. Two purple crescents had begun to form.

There was no clear direction to go in, not even deer paths, only the dense thicket. I remembered my mother telling me that if I ever got lost in a cornfield, to just keep going in one direction until I was out of it. I began to walk. Thorns caught on my arms and legs, making the skin rise in small peaks as I pulled away. They caught the fringe that lined the hem of my shirt, and the higher thistles held strands of my hair. I fell into a rhythm of stepping once—a careful, solid footing—then plucking the thorns away, and stepping again. Curls of green grass lapped on the backs of my legs. Dirt found its way into my shoes, making them damp and gritty. The thorns made lesions, even after my efforts to separate them from my skin. The forget-me-nots, their small blue caps, were softened down by my steps. As I walked, the sky shifted as dark gathered in granules in the sky, past the silhouettes of the knotweed leaves: swaying shapes of dark, rustling around me.