SHERRE VERNON Raise Me Up

SHERRE VERNON | RAISE ME UP

1

Hot water and gravel detergent in the upstairs tub. The hamper tumbles the edge over and I roll the legs of the yellow jumper above my calves and stomp. We will dry the clothes hanging on towel racks and hooks, on shower rods and stair-rails. We will dry them with hairdryers and the heat of summer skin.

2

The antibiotics are always pink like sidewalk chalk and a rhyme about fruit-cock-tail that I don’t know is dirty until you tell me. They taste like licking ashtrays from cheap cigarette gum in waxy wrappers. I empty the whole bottle, one shot at a time, chase it with red fruit punch sugar.

3

Fresh bread is just sugar, flour & water— like a body: salt and yeast. We can get those things from the food pick up, the long line for the block of not-cheddar. It’s enough to keep us coming back. We eat bread hot and I learn to make it so I can share this with the girl I love in the locker room. She wears her hair up, shows her neck.

4

Hip thrusts to Maneater in the center of the trailer. When we drive through the park to get to the pool, Madonna says she’s gonna marry him and you scream along. I sleep in the small closet you’ve made for me, one side with a shelf for stacking books you’ll leave me—the other, a window.

5

Gifts included: high-waisted jeans from Panama City; a beat-up car I wanted but wasn’t allowed; slouch booties when I needed a pair of Docs; your name (which I never use); a mustard yellow jumper I wore sick and threadbare because I loved the buttons; the wind like music, screaming against the plywood & concrete; your face in every photograph of me.