When You Are Six
by Dorsey Craft
after Aimee Nezhukumatathil
When your father complains about acid reflux, you tell him that Pepcid AC relieves all the symptoms of heartburn for over twenty-four hours. He crayons the mane of your lion with gold streaks, shows you how to stay in the lines. His neck smells like a fishing boat. When you close your eyes, you see birds’ nests. You know not to touch the eggs. At Christmas, your father wedges the new air rifle behind the piano where you like to sit watching black follow ivory follow black. You take the gun outside and lie still as the keys in the yellow rose bush that overgrows the dog pen. You set it on top, feel it rise and fall with your stomach. The barrel makes you two halves. The dogs lie down next to you on the other side of the fence. You show them your tongue. Your father mills about the yard, plants plastic bottles for target practice. You can hear his feet ruffling the grass like the birds that dart through the dark green walls. He’s told you blue jays are thieves who live in stolen nests lined with gum machine prizes. Their feathers glitz like summer above you. The kudzu crosses its legs like a woman.
When your father complains about acid reflux, you tell him that Pepcid AC relieves all the symptoms of heartburn for over twenty-four hours. He crayons the mane of your lion with gold streaks, shows you how to stay in the lines. His neck smells like a fishing boat. When you close your eyes, you see birds’ nests. You know not to touch the eggs. At Christmas, your father wedges the new air rifle behind the piano where you like to sit watching black follow ivory follow black. You take the gun outside and lie still as the keys in the yellow rose bush that overgrows the dog pen. You set it on top, feel it rise and fall with your stomach. The barrel makes you two halves. The dogs lie down next to you on the other side of the fence. You show them your tongue. Your father mills about the yard, plants plastic bottles for target practice. You can hear his feet ruffling the grass like the birds that dart through the dark green walls. He’s told you blue jays are thieves who live in stolen nests lined with gum machine prizes. Their feathers glitz like summer above you. The kudzu crosses its legs like a woman.
Dorsey Craft is the author of PLUNDER (Bauhan 2020), winner of the 2019 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, Southern Indiana Review and elsewhere. She lives and writes in Jacksonville, Florida.