Here, I bottle-feed
an orphaned lamb
for the farmer
next door. Feel
maternal at nine.
I dodge spider
webs in our garden
while picking tomatoes
to grind into Mom’s
Sunday dinner sauce.
I run beneath
our neighbor’s trellises.
The only girl. Play War
with Donny and Danny
among the vines.
Here, we fill our cheeks
with green grapes. Tart
juice bursts between teeth,
trickles down throats, while
we shoot toy machine guns.
Bratatat, bratatat, bratatat.
Here, at night,
we sit on the hill.
Grass damp, sky
full of stars. “Look,
there’s North Star, Big
Dipper, Little Dipper.”
We are little too.
It’s all we know.
World is fresh, new,
magical. It’s more
than enough.
Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
Paula R. Hilton
Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in The Feminine Collective, The Sunlight Press, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Dear Damsels, The Tulane Review, and elsewhere. Her novel, Little Miss Chaos, was selected as a Best Indie Teen Read by Kirkus, and her first poetry collection, At Any Given Second, received a Kirkus star. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans.
