As it turns out he wasn’t even buried under the pine tree
by Isabel Cuellar Ferreira
but in a big cemetery outside the city. So maybe I’ll dig him up with my cream-colored nails and drag his bones to Oklahoma. Maybe I’ll build a house on the flatter land and make it so strong that no tornado or sleazeball can rip it away. Maybe I’ll grab a handful of dirt from the old place, and a twig from the pine, and a stone from the gravel path. And maybe the new place will be different, but it will be mine. And maybe I’ll change the stories but maybe my grandmother changed them too. And maybe I’ll sit on the back porch to sing to the bones. I’ll sing the old, fast songs, to distract them. Maybe the bones won’t notice that the soil is lighter here, the trees sparser, the sky wider, the city farther.