Eleven
Kinds
of Sky
JOE WILKINS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
LISA M. HAMILTON
Slate
Sometimes it is okay, in the half-dark of an early midsummer
morning, to climb out of bed, to leave your little brother slack-jawed and small and tangled in wool blankets, to pad quietly in
white-footed pajamas down the hallway, through the bathroom’s
all-night odors of hard water and drying towels, and on into your
parents’ room.
They leave the window open at night, to breathe the good prairie air, so it is breezy and cold, and you slow and shiver. The floor
is not carpeted but plain wood, the floral-print wallpaper peeling
where the seams come together. On your mother’s dresser there
are a few framed snapshots and a crucifix, some bright necklaces
and rings, a blouse or two. On your father’s chest of drawers
there is nothing save his silver watch and jackknife, his cracked
snakeskin wallet. Yesterday’s work jeans are draped across the
foot of the bed, his old brown belt still strung through the loops.
And the two of them: they are mountains of cream sheets, of
musky warmth, of slow breath, slow breath, slow breath.
You crawl — quietly, so very quietly — up onto the bed between
them. Without a word, they make room for you, and you slide yourself between their scratchy sheets and pull the blankets up tight
