Arrow Rock Literary Journal

Her mother had died
so she inherited the house.
She was a nice lady,
energetic and bright.
The daughter was,
not the mother.
She liked that we stayed together as a group,
my older sister and me watching the younger three.
She said we could play in her backyard any time we
wanted.
She was often not there,
she had her own house and her own adult kids.
We thanked her,
grateful.
The next day, we went up the street to
Ms. Shirley’s house.
Her car was not there,
but she had said we were welcome any time.
My younger sister was on her trike
and my baby brother was in a wagon.
We sang and danced,
happy to have a new play-place.
We reached the house
and let ourselves into the backyard.
Unlike our yard,
her yard had a fence.
Our yard had dull grass and bald spots
and was overrun with weeds and ants.
Her grass was green,
and there were no muddy spots or ant hills.
You could roll around in the grass
with little fear of getting too dirty.
We danced, we sang, we rolled, we cartwheeled, we sat,
we were just having fun.
A cop showed up to say
hello.
He was quite nice, peeking over the fence
and asking what we were up to.
His blond hair glowed in the sunlight
while his sunglass deflected its rays.
We told him that
we were just having fun.
We told him that
Ms. Shirley told us that we could play in her yard.
He said ok,
gave us some stickers and drove off.
We tried to restart the fun but
we could not.
We walked home,
us older two wondering if we did something
wrong.
We later learned
what had happened.
A neighbor had called the cops
on us.
She thought that we were going to rob
Ms. Shirley’s house.

We never went back to Ms. Shirley’s house.

Joshua Hammond has been reading since he was two years old. He reads books, comics, short stories, webcomics, manga, poetry, interviews, articles, and labels on chip bags. He also regularly listens to audiobooks and podcasts. You can find his website here joshuadhammond and his journal here Lotto Gelato Grotto