When I learned of how mother cut her tongue on those pages my tongue cried to feel the sting of sacred edges. My bones ached for the breaking I knew those pages could bring. hit me. cut me. rip my sides out. I would scream at her locked door. The door she hid behind cutting her tongue on those sacred edges. The day mother let me in I walked in on all fours with a hunger for anything she left. But mothers tongue was gone. Her bones were no more. She licked all those sacred edges. She was broken by every last page. She was no more and I fed upon her flesh. But a child shouldn’t feed upon a sacrifice such as this. A child. me. a young girl. never left that room again. never tasted the sacred edges and felt the breaking of pages. I just was and never could be. For the rest of my days until my spine was worn down by the windows light and my legs married the dust.

I used to ask my knees why they smelt like the sea, I only asked because my knees have never seen the sea. But somehow their wrinkled faces held the scent of traveling winds. I used to know this man who carried bottles by his side. Bottles full of truths but he bottled them up. to afraid of how they would make people feel. I used to be the type of sinner that only prayed for my forgiveness on sunday afternoons. I used to be the type of sinner that held hands to tightly and left bruises on toddlers wrist. I was a vessel of holy water with not a drop to spare. And when you came crawling out from under my legs I knew your face. I knew your wrists and I remembered your thighs. But you remembered not. You didn’t know my face or know my wrists.

I never asked to be accountable for all the sins my father committed down in those mines. I’m sure if he knew i’d be the one paying for his wicked ways he would have thought twice about doing them. At least that’s the way I like to think about it. Nobody wants to think of their father as a wicked man. Last month he put on his nicest pair of slacks, took the change from grandmas rainy day bucket and went down to those mines. That was the last time I saw him. Cracked hands digging for a few quarters, pennies and mistakingly picking up a button is the last image I have of him. Days later the post man came, the one with the limp that seems to switch legs depending on the weather. He brought me a letter. Boys like me never get letters, I get the occasional Happy Birthday card from my aunt in the city but it’s nothing more than an obligatory gesture. I stood on that porch with the heaviest letter my hands had ever held. My old dull schrade knife slide right through that letters spine only to find hundreds of paper scraps all with black bold face letters on them. My fathers sins. They mailed me my fathers sins. I carried that letter till my hands were just as cracked as his. I carried that letter till there no longer was any rainy day money in grandmas bucket. I never married and I never became promiscuous. I never wanted children. I never wanted them to receive my letter full of scraps of paper with black bold face letters on them. I never wanted them to be accountable for my sins.

Before sister was born brother and I cut down the old weeping willow behind our house. We made sister a crib out of that old weeping willows bones in hopes that it would save her from falling between the cracks of mothers worn down bed.

After sister was born brother fell from the kitchen table with rope around his dry neck. And a note stuck in his sock. “I got the job”

After brother was buried mother started dancing with the pastors who carried hollowed out Bibles. She wore long dresses and no longer hid in her worn down bed. Mother left a note on the kitchen table. “I took the job, feed your sister”

After mother took the job I fed my sister leaves and fresh water from the stream that runs under our porch. Sister and I never left notes about jobs. We never ate at the kitchen table and our beds never became worn down. I grew old. She grew up. She married a man who already had a job. She had children who never feared falling between the cracks of her worn down bed.

After sister married. After sister became her own. I left a note on the bathroom sink. “I never could hold a steady job” I fell between the cracks in mothers worn down bed.