Yesterday was dirt under fingernails

and rain tripping on a tin roof.

Yesterday was cracked wooden counters, torn wing of a white ant, the silence of heat rising off our running path. A shard of glass lodges itself in my thumb, bright-sharp, and my memory begins to bleed.

When I bring you into the past we take the long way. Someone said there’s a road now, we can drive, but I march us through hundreds of dried and silent s…