The nut-laced smell of loam
pervades the root cellar;
here, the air is cool, damp, redolent with the scents
of herb bunches hanging on the highest beams.
Miscreant, we pull the whitewashed door closed
from the inside and lie on the chill, dirt floor,
trace our initials in the swept clay, talk in feral
whispers.
We are hiding among the bushel baskets of cabbages
and hulking winter squash, tucked behind barrels
brimming with red potatoes and purple onions.
She will not find us here behind the neatly labeled
rows
of Ball jars filled with tomatoes, fiddlehead and
flat green beans.
She thinks I fear the dark and small places more than
her.
We use the time to watch a black and yellow spider
repair her web, to plot impossible escapes to distant
lands.
We are hiding from the graphic accusation
of two muddy footprints defiling her virgin white
couch,
the pristine carpet we are not allowed to set foot
upon.
We are hiding from a dare flung down, my sister's
gauntlet
taunting me to cross ten feet of pale temptation,
picked up, only to be dropped again when, handwalking,
gravity betrayed me, barely leaning. I slipped
from line to slope to arc, the slight tilt
touching my silt glazed sneakers to my embossed
velvet doom.
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