Inside Life, Tammy
Ana Gonçalves
Response
Tammy
Lisa Biggar
Inspiration Piece
My cousin and I would
make smores and tell
ghost stories in our tent,
drifting off to sleep with
the ground as our mattress,
river singing its sweet lullabye.
Tammy was shy, but
I finally talked her into
skinny dipping one night,
while our fathers drank
beer on the cliff above,
calling out to us now and
then to be careful, to watch
the current, but it was the dark
shadows under water we feared,
the bodies of fast moving carp,
scales slick against our skin.
Fifteen years later, when she was
dying of cancer, it was the river
that gave her solace, where she
said she had no worries, no
cares, where every night was
a dream of being pulled off
a rock, of being swept into
a roar of life, that never would
have been hers married to
a man with a port-o-potty
business and living in a trailer
with a dog and three kids.
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