“Uncle Roger Got The Farm …”

Uncle Roger got the farm when they all died. So we helped him pack.

We drove out of Minneapolis. Two hours through fields of feathery trees and hills of corn and tin barns. It was motor oil and seeds in our California teeth and snaking roads. Our noses burned, our gums ached, our eyes sought straight lines.

We turned past a gate and drove through a tree tunnel where I saw our land for the first time. Miles of tan ears as warm as my hand. The whole place a sound—of crickets rubbing, of things nestling hidden, of trees soaking light.

We shook hands with the door knob on the white house where they all once lived. A moon-shaped hole in the ceiling bathed the inside in linen light. An Easter-egg blue refrigerator holding a cracked mixing bowl. A baking table with flour drawers. A dining room, chairs set.

The pipes of an organ still breathing; milk jugs rung in white circles. Pictures framed of people, strong jawed with knuckle-y hands. I felt my face, my joints, all the places where I connect. The sky fading it all.

We rubbed our boney fingers on things, taking and taking, rolling them to the metal barns, until our legs were crooked and night fell. We left Uncle Roger there in a mobile home alongside the white house with the torn roof he swore he’d get to fixing.

We drove out to fireflies flicking a glow in darkness so black you could get lost. I thought not of the foreign miles of flat road ahead, but of my hands on doorknobs touching skin.