shark

when daddy comes in he carries you to bed is there anything you feel like you could eat pokey? anything at all? all you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside and he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. mother says hell I don’t know further north I’d guess the next morning you wake up in your bed and sit up mother says, Pete, I think she’s up he hollers in you ready for breakfast pokey then he comes in grinning still in his work clothes from the night before he’s holding a farm bushel the plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt if you stacked them up they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night he says your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy fort smith, arkansas found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums and I says buddy i got a little girl sick back in texas she’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do its when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise the skin is still warm from riding in the sun in daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin and you snap out of it or are snapped out of it never again will you lay a hand against yourself not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you so long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world though in love portions are never stingy there are no smidgens or pinches only rolling abundance that’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand you don’t earn it its given