Tami Haaland

In the evening she comes to me like a child ready for bed. She slips under covers, curls into my curves or stretches against my spine. Some have said they fear I might crush her, but we're a tender pair, each aware of the warmth and the other. I knew a woman once who kept an orphaned antelope, let it roam her kitchen, sleep in her bed, musky scent and hooves. This dog looks like a small deer, poised and silent in the lawn, but at night, she is a dark body, lean and long against the lavender cotton of my summer sleeping. We are bone and bone, muscle and muscle, and underneath each surface a quiet and insistent pulse.

When I open the door and reach to the light switch the world opens as it did each time. The garlic jar on the ledge, the ceramic cup holding cheese cutters and paring knives. Outside a branch from the ash tree worries the window. It was a place where I knew the drawer pulls, the feel of steps to the basement, the smell of cool cement. If I open the middle cabinet, the linen is there as you left it, well-ordered, none of it fine.

She’s with Grandma in front of Grandma’s house, backed by a willow tree, gladiola and roses. Who did she ever want to please? But Grandma seems half-pleased and annoyed. No doubt Mother frowns behind the lens, wants to straighten this sassy face. Maybe laughs, too. Little girl with her mouth wide, tongue out, yelling at the camera. See her little white purse full of treasure, her white sandals? She has things to do, you can tell. Places to explore beyond the frame, and these women picking flowers and taking pictures. Why won’t they let her go?

The smell, once water has rinsed it, is like a field of ripe grain, or the grain held in a truck, and if you climb the steel side, one foot lodged on the hubcap, the other on the wheel, and pull your body upward, your hands holding to tarp hooks, and lift toes onto the rim of the truck box, rest your ribs against the side, you will see beetles and grasshoppers among the hulled kernels. Water stirs and resurrects harvest dust: sun beating on abundance, the moist heat of grain collected in steel, hands plunging and lifting, the grain spilling back.