Eliza knew she was skinny. Her mama used to tell her, “Girl, you just a slip cover for your bones. I swear you the only girl in Filo County who could come late to Easter Service and just pick up someone’s bible if you needs a place to sit.”
Filo County, Nebraska, was a place so flat that the souvenir post cards at Alston’s Drug Store appeared to be empty frames. On a good day Daddy said you could see tomorrow com’n. Eliza guessed tomorrow wasn’t much to look at.
The day she crossed over the county line, Eliza was as angry as the fresh welt rising under her left eye. She readied a good spit but then decided she’d already given the place enough of herself and swallowed it back inside.
“Good bye, Filo County. I hope the winds and the rain take the summer off so’s that you crack and peal til there ain’t noth’n show’n here, but the rafters of hell.”
Karyn Powers
Writes poetry, for trade mags and all forms of
fiction (from Flash to tax returns,)
Lives in Northern Wisconsin w/
husband , Patrick & two labs.
