rodeo reprieve

by Collette Grace

My mother’s nightgowns are thick, heavy to the touch, swamping me when she leans down to kiss me goodnight. Well-loved fabric built to last the abuse of a thousand bedtimes, coated in the ghosts of her grandmother’s perfumes.

Orphy’s clothes were mine, faded and stretched over new flesh, sleeves riding up, elastic waistbands leaving angry red marks on soft doughy skin. They sit sticky in the laundry basket bathed in sweet sweat.

My school outfits are an awkward amalgamation, synthetic scratchy plastic fibers. I stand in lunch lines wearing hand-me-downs, 35¢ skirts with crooked hemlines. Ogled by the other girls, the stench of mothballs and mold haunts me down the halls.

My father has seven thin t-shirts, which stink chronically of cigarette smoke, and three pairs of well-worn jean shorts that reach his knees. I watch him stomp through snow with his calves exposed, faded denim the only barrier between his thighs and frostbite.

Once, in a foolish act of adoring him, my heart ached when he left town, so I wept until my mother wrapped my pillow in his Daytona 500 Special Anniversary t-shirt. Now the dog is the only one who cries in his absence, so I untangle his discarded laundry from the bin and pile it in her bed. She snores and dreams of him while the rest of the house sighs in relief.

Collette Grace is a Texan author who needs to write like she needs to breathe. She is a graduate of Texas State University with a B.A. in English and Religious Studies. She enjoys literary fiction with queer and romantic themes, though her guilty pleasure genre is apocalypse fiction. She currently works as an administrative assistant. Her hobbies include reading, writing, napping, and being plagued by e-mails.