Anyone’s Daughter {Haibun}

Curled up on the floor, the old farmer winces at the break of dawn dipping her painted toes through the slits in the thatch roof. Eyes like slowing whirlpools, he grips the bottle and whips the hay from burnt shoulders, sun-speckled like a child. His old boy hollers, throat wobbling and voice an old door creaking, wide open and begging for release. The withering stoic resents his suicidal child. He pulls his shotgun and barrels down the stairs.

A little girl concealed by sunflower stalks sits with a package of raw ground beef. Before the sun rose, she tip-toed from bed, and watched it slowly defrost in a large bowl of tepid water, poking it further down with a tack-sized pinky. She practically drools as she rips the plastic with jagged, gnawed fingernails and wiggly teeth. One tooth comes loose and falls for the farm dog to later swallow, and wretch up with a wreath of feathers.

She’s stuffing the beef into her mouth with glee, legs splayed like death by dropping. The shot splits the sky into winter birds of green and blue, ghastly gray watercolor dripping down into the grass. Fresh as a daisy and bitterly unwanted like the cold remnants of herbal tea. Just like she - who stares with starry eyes at the man with the gun, her very first love. His features etched with vehemence, eyes melting like the moon against firewood.

She’ll watch the display with wolfish hunger, crawling and capable. When her grappling fingers strike a worm she’ll catch him in her mouth. She’ll loom over the poor bird, and the bunny who, in fear or solidarity, died beside him. She’ll press her hands to the old farmer’s window like the glass which keeps her from the red meat at the supermarket. The more intestinal, sanguine, pliable, the better. On Tuesday, her mother will check her for parasites.

anyone’s daughter

laid beside roadkill rabbit

a girlish weakness.