forever in the hills

forever in the hills

early summer

thumbing a ride

The glass wand inside the lid of Mercurochrome and the smell and pull and feel of white adhesive tape;
That red string, crispy paper and odd fragrance of a Band Aid;
The thin strip you had to very carefully tear in order to open a Kleenex box.
Its glass stopper, and to leave or not to leave the paper on a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce?
Cartons of ice cream with their big smeary flaps;
The tiny round tab on a milk bottle cap, echoed by one on the lid of an ice cream cup with its awkward wooden spoon.
Zippers on the side of a dress, under your left armpit.
Hooks and eyes.
Ridgy, crimped caps on soda pop that hurt, with bubbles that stung and weird stuff swirling around the bottom of the bottle.
Cary telling me how much she hated the big rubber toecaps of her US Keds when she was little;
Paper frills on the bony ends of swell meats;
And all the funny things flowers were stuck into or wound with--tape, wire, fake leaves or real ones from something else--so you could wear them on your shoulder.

NON-STICK BAKER

air waves

The radio was a real companion growing up. Mine sat on my bedside table. It was small and brown with a light and a red thing for the stations with a hole in the side of its celluloid cover over the station numbers where I’d dug it away to let out a gnat once. I would fall asleep listening to the radio, for years. For a very long time, well after I’d moved away from home, I hated sleeping on my other side. I felt out of balance and the ear that was up got cold. The other one, more used to being out, never did. I told a medical student about it once and he was delighted. He recognized my symptoms as the exact same ones he’d just learned miners suffer from always lying on one side digging ore.