Restless After School

Nothing to do but scuff down the graveyard road behind the playground, past the name-stones lined up in rows beneath their guardian pines, on out into the long, low waves of plains that dissolved time. We'd angle off from fence and telephone line, through ribbon-grass that closed behind as though we'd never been, and drift toward the bluff above the river-bend where the junked pickup moored with its load of locust-skeletons. Stretched across the blistered hood, we let our dresses catch the wind while clouds above dimmed their pink to purple, then shadow-blue— So slow, we listened to our own bones grow.