Sublime

“No, really, I’m done.” They are reminding me of the years when they were small and it was just me in the house beneath all that snow and Joe was in the barn trying to fix a tractor he didn’t know how to fix, and I felt like the children would eat me. Nell was eating me, still at my breast, and the other two rushed to crawl in my lap whenever I sat

but then her little girl came along, and her little girl’s daddy left, and before you knew it . . . she was one of them. The needy.