Photo by Valeriy Andrushko on Unsplash
I have a girl on each side, their cold
feet and long toenails in a tangle, reading
Book 1, Little House in the Big Woods,
a childhood of frontier life, its constant work
and simple joys, Pa’s meat hunks drying
on attic hooks, the bullet molds hot
from the coals. I’m starting this story
at the beginning, before the shit hits the fan,
a few months in to my new diagnosis, officially
losing the dexterity of my hands. There’s
so much to learn from here, like Pa’s wager
goes bad and he forfeits his land. I used to love
the wholesome talk of the men at the mill,
playing on the television in our Providence
apartment, the fear I felt when Mary went blind,
first fitted for glasses, before her quick decline.
I can hum the opening bars anytime, see
the covered wagon on the ridge line, Laura
tumbling downhill with braids like rope pulls,
the years to come rich or painful and mine.
Kirsten Andersen is the author of the chapbook Family Court from Q. Avenue Press. A National Poetry Series Finalist, her work has been published in The Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Believer, Tin House, and elsewhere. She lives on Cape Cod, where she serves as the Writing Fellowship Coordinator at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.