Clay Under the Hill

Lydia Copeland Gwyn

 

I drive across county lines to fix the mistake and dig in his grave with my hands, losing a fingernail in the soil. Insects flash their silver bodies like tiny fish. And then his face, blue as starlight. His hands are old bone—graying like grime on an ax handle—and I realize I was wrong.

He was never buried alive.

In another dream, he’s in a body bag at the kitchen table. Zipped to his chest in the same plastic used to cover typewriters not in use. He slumps over an empty dinner plate.

In waking life, he doesn’t come to sit on the edge of my bed. I don’t feel his hand on my cheekbone as our father does.

The dogs bark, but there is nothing outside.

There’s something inside me now that stops the breath from going all the way down, some rock, a knot, a finger under a gill.

 

Lydia Copeland Gwyn’s storied have appeared or are forthcoming in Elm Leaves Journal, Right Hand Pointing, the Florida Review, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. Her book “Tiny Doors” is available from Another New Calligraphy. She lives in East Tennessee with her husband and two children.