Yolk
Hay sticks cling to speckled egg shells—a way to enter sun-moon-lamppost light unless boot soles carry the yellow stalks back in. The girl with the yellow ponytail doesn’t share the hay stick’s enthusiasm for the outside. But hay knows that anything must be better than a chicken house.
The girl with the yellow ponytail escapes to chicken houses to cradle two warm eggs in each palm, set four hay sticks free, and return for more glow. The hands she seeks are hiding away from her or grasping long, sleek soup ladles, wooden spoons, and plastic toothbrushes scooping and slam dunking dead insects into a Gardenia’s creamy centre. Cold air whirls around the girl with the yellow ponytail in sun-moon-lamppost light, but in the chicken house crackles mingle with clucks, wood splits and invites carpenter ants to crawl to the other side. To the other side, she walks, the girl with the yellow ponytail flirts with cobwebs over grimy windows. She once stuck her finger in her mother’s Macrame curtains, and her hand glowed again. Eggs don’t make her cry. She draws a letter S with her finger. The window is oily leaving black dots across her finger pad. She peers through the Macrame webbing. The tip of her nose skids on the slippery-when-wet surface. Treaded tyres crush grass. Horses jump as if a horse shoe is half-on, half-off, paw-paw-pawing the dirt until horse riding lessons for humans end. A mother cat leaves her basket full of kittens rolling in an old shirt. Old shirt sleeves are handy. The girl rubs her wet eyes against a row of cotton bluebells. The curtain shrouds over a yellow stream. She walks to the door because she likes her eggs scrambled. She’ll return to the roar of the motors clanging with big people’s voices. She’ll return to the tinkling cymbals, and she’ll eat her eggs under the table because that’s where the four pillars stand. And she hopes one day, the story will read like this:
Once upon a time, a girl with golden locks skipped to the chicken house to collect warm eggs. While her loving mother poured her heart and soul into a creamy, buttery batter, she sat next to her uncle and had a ride in his big green tractor. She then ran to her horse, patted its white patch, and surprised it with some sugar cubes. At the call of her mother’s voice, she ran home and sat at the table dragging the pepper shaker across the gingham tablecloth and divided her omelette into four and a bit. She always left some titbits for Jack Russell Jack resting his two front paws on her faded blues. No blues in part two. She slides down a table leg because that’s where love resides—too. That’s where Jack leans, against a pillar of white woodness, kisses of the sloppy kind, kindness—cake’s ready—sweetness. The girl with the yellow ponytail sits down with Jack before leaping into sun-moon-lamppost light.
- © Isabelle B.L 2023
Isabelle B.L is an Australian/French teacher. Her work can be found in the Best Microfiction 2022 anthology, Visual Verse, Compass Rose Literary Journal, Writing In A Woman’s Voice and elsewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment