1
The dream: wet bales of hay piled in the sleet-streaked barn. Leaves in their autumn plumage pricking the wet dirt, plums ripe as bruises, and her fine-veined eyelids rising like twilight.
November is her bitter month.
2
Grandmother says that good girls must be quiet like mice, and her mouth is a mouse, ready to be broken by the pounce of a long-tailed tabby.
He came in the early days of September, blood-flecked harvest month. Smooth slicked-back boy, calluses on the pads of his fingers, wry wicked-fingered man.
His eyes flicker over her and through her and she pretends not to notice, in the fields, in the old kitchen with the icebox, in the yellow pollen sunshine. But she tosses half-glances over her back, rubbing her chin against her shoulder, smiling shyly at his deep-bellied laughs.
He tugs on her braid each morning and she looks at him with laughing, scolding eyes. He leans in and she thinks that he will kiss her, but he tells her promise me, and steps out, a pair of strong arms swinging for the field.
Grandmother says it is an old story, the oldest story, and in mid-autumn, promises taste as sweet as cold plums, and ripe as sharp-scented citrus.
3
The rhythm of the scythes is a burning syncopation, a shadow unfolding on the backdrop of night.
He shakes her, he shakes, and the ashes fall down her forehead from the flame of her hair.
Her heart beats low in the cradle of her hips, beats against his face as he lays his cheek there and closes his eyes.
She gives all her promises in advance of the asking. Grandmother's lips press in on her unease. All dreams unfurl in the months with embers glowing at their tails.
4
Each season departs like an abbreviated kiss; wet winter, gold wheat summer.
In the evenings, her lips curl up soft and quiet, twitching for the next boy who says come here, little mouse, and she burrows into the yellow scent of the barn, splintered now by the sharp claws of memory.
Her blue-tipped fingers tug the blanket to her chin. She knows the flavor of wool and wood-smoke spiraling upwards into the dawn, the dust flaking against the skin of her wide cheeks.
Dream cinders tease their way into the loose garments settling over her in the shape of an embrace: her open mouth, the wet-phrased kiss, the last ember rushing towards unmaking.
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