daddy poured sugar over what mama took

girls like me learned with gravel

Mama tied me to the back of her truck with a leash she said was soft.

Said girls who talk too much need something to chase besides their mouths.

“Run,” she said, engine humming like God’s throat clearing. And I did.

I ran alongside that rust-wet Ford like a hound high on hunt.

I was chasing some shape of her love that never turned around.

My legs chewing gravel, my lungs heaving prayers.

Mama didn’t holler. She let the wheels talk.

When I fell, the earth didn’t catch me. It dragged.

Skin left behind in patches like confessions peeled off slow.

I rolled into the creek and begged the water to baptize me out.

I hoped a cottonmouth would come kiss me quiet, whisper me gone, tell my veins what dying tasted like.

But it didn’t. The snake blinked and slithered on, because even venom didn’t want me.

I was in trouble, see. For speaking. For being a girl with too many words and not enough silence.

Mama called me Madison, like that name could straighten a bent tongue.

Madison. The name she used when the lesson needed to stick.

The name she used when love hurt clean.

She looked down at me from the edge of the bank, haloed in engine smoke and reckoning.

Said, “Next time, run quieter.”

Mama didn’t wait to see if I stood.

She just let the gravel spit, and the tailpipe preach. She taught by motion, not by mouth.

The lesson was gospel, and I was the choir too full of song.

I limped past Mrs. Laverne’s porch, her begonias blooming like apologies no one asked for.

She didn’t wave. Just squinted real slow. This was a scene she’d seen before.

Every house on that stretch of dirt looked away.

Even the screen doors shut up tight.

Because they knew better than to speak when Mama taught.

I walked home blistered, mud in my scalp, stories in my blood. Quiet for once.

The kind of quiet Mama liked: bone-deep, sermon-thick.

Daddy didn’t say much when I got home. Just set a jelly jar of sweet tea on the porch rail.

Cold, amber, steeped in the kind of love that never makes a fuss.

I drank it down like it might fill all the places Mama left hollow.

The tea was sweet. It held too much. It didn’t soften anything.

I didn’t speak. The jar did. The tea did. Everything but me.

The truths stayed pressed behind my teeth. My throat knew better.

I licked the sugar off my lips; let it bless the bruises.

Love doesn't always heal. Sometimes it brands.

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This is a companion to another story: my dog died cheap, and daddy said amen

From the collection: poor white trash elegies

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Your readership is a gift. Thank you for being here. If you’d like to support me further, you can drop a little sugar in the jar by upgrading to a paid membership or buying me a cup of coffee. Your support means the world.

Gratefully, Maddie

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Some other recent thoughts I’ve written:

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my mouth made more noise than the flies

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the kitchen was a funeral home