We bought a camper in a brown pickup truck that smelled like a Johnny Cash song I can’t quite remember. My tie too tight, frumpy chapel blouse sticking out of where it was tucked into my skort, nausea drove me from school as my dad & grandpa drove towards metal, plastic, & tarp—enough to call home if you felt like it. One of those kids who turned around to the last moment of everything, I saw the owners looking all pale-faced pain like little clouds holding their rain to not call us back & slam that 3 grand back into my dad’s hand. Woven around meaning is birth, so we drove with an earth full of memory behind us, pulled by a tiny pickup truck. I can’t remember what my dad & grandpa were talking about, but I see their heads above the grey seats: my father & my mother’s father, laughing like leaves, looking back at the camper, at me all curled up & shining, probably wondering how someone can pull something so heavy.
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Brooke Stanish’s work has appeared in journals such as The Windhover, Sigma Tau Delta’s magazine The Rectangle, Living Waters Review, Time of Singing, and Green Blotter. Her writing has also been published in the University of Edinburgh’s The Student and Washington D.C. based Capitol Standard. She lives in Florida.