She is smiling because her daddy won’t be home tonight.

FENCE PLAYING BY COURTNEY LEIGH KIRBY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 11

Carla, she is sitting on

the neighbor’s fence, one leg

dangling over either side.

She is smiling because her daddy

won’t be home tonight, and she

don’t ask why or how come mama?

has all her clothes packed up

in paper bags they’ve collected

from the grocery store. (I know

I won’t see her no more, that

they are going far away and

one day, in fifteen years, I’ll

hear her voice again through a

phone line and she’ll be crying about

her mama, saying she’s gone and

do I remember when we were kids?

+

I’ll say yes I do, I’ll say I knew all

along about everything, that she

doesn’t need to explain why

when I came to her house the next

day she wasn’t there. I’ll say “Carla,

don’t be scared any more.”)

+

The screen door slams open

and Carla’s mama lays eyes on me,

says “Judy, I didn’t see you,

how you been?” and I say just fine ma’am,

but she knows better. And Carla,

she lets herself fall from the

well-grounded fence.