Leeches.

Written in a short writer's workshop called, objects and memorials for individuals affected by incarceration.


glass jars take me close to him
crystal clear country cups
we used for everything
- making sweet peach preserves
- sweating from icy water to take slow sips
- warming alcohol to spread against mosquitoes
holding leeches.
leeches.
flipping over brown muddy rocks
was a sticky georgia pass time
with cousins so close they were your sisters and brothers.
with different mothers.
who were your mothers, too.
my auntie sara bell only allowed six people to come in to her house:
me, my siblings ami and shaka, our cousins eli and elsa, and our fathers.
she lived on the outskirts of atlanta in a small country shack.
across from her lived a sister she never talked to, mary bell.
grass touched sky at sara bells. the high blades hid us, swallowed us in a nature
one slow day me, ami, eli and elsa were flipping over rocks when we noticed grayish slimy creatures. one and then twenty.
we ran to eli and asked him what they were. he said, leeches.
crawl slow. suck blood. take life.
He told us we better run 'for they ate our ashy legs. Later that night, three sleep in a bed in our bigmama's house. eli awakened us with fear in a glass jar. leeches.
crawl slow. suck blood. take life. it scared us to death.
now eli sits in his own glass jar.
out in some country county jail with blades he probably wished were green and touched the sky.
in a system that
crawls slow.
sucks blood.
takes life.
we found out that those leeches were only slugs. harmless creatures we eventually melted with a teaspoon of salt.
but with eli
the leeches
are there to stay.