Train to Agra

The Taming

 The Taming The Sisters of the Sacred Heart spent hours on my scrawl—cracking knuckles into shape, pinching the back of my hand—while outside the world of St. James School, in the melting asphalt, the air tight with cicadas, my father’s heart skipped a beat. How strange the pencil felt after a long summer of boys freckling in the sun, color threading my skin through and through. In the hot rooms of September, the sisters willed my Ss and Ls, tamed my unruly fingers over thick paper curled brown at the edges. Hands rode over mine, practicing perfection. At night, I duplicated shape and form while the monitor traced my father’s heart in ridges and valleys I couldn’t understand, could not translate. I wanted to order each word into salvation, to write out the jagged, scratch it into clean lines and half spaces. ...