Hand-Me-Down-Days

Hand-Me-Down-Days Girl in the backrow whose only gift for Christmas is a pencil box, empty, its sole treasure your name crayoned in letters stark as winter trees: you linger in the doorwayfar away your father rocks in some dark corner of a tar paper shack, curses the wind whistling through cracks. Near the river your mother's new grave glistens. Late afternoon light slants across our desks. We huddle by the stove to read the lines of your hands hovering above the fire, scrubbed raw on ridges of washboards. Wind skirls across rocky fields whipping you all the way home. -Jeff Daniel Marion 17 ...