the best place to justwrite

The best place to hide my footprints is underneath your kitchen floor, the one that creaks at night when nobody is awake and throws shadow figures onto the unseen earth below it. The tea kettle is whispering mismatched lullabies in the morning and I am outside in the garden behind the blueberry bush. The roses died months after Mom planted them, but they still have thorns piercing the hot summer air like a scream in a field full of grass. Grass is so quiet. You're so quiet I can hardly see you. I learned to whittle last year and saw your face in every knot, your fingerprints in every imperfection. I stopped buying sandpaper and told you it's because it reminds me of the beach, the type of walking that scrapes away your skin and tries to see what's inside you. And by you I mean me, of course. I've spent my whole life trying to see my own eyes, in the unrippled surface of a lake, in my little brother's fingernails. The last place I looked was your pupils, but all I saw was a sunflower, its seeds all fallen, its petals wrinkled like my grandmother's hands. This summer walking to lunch, we saw two praying mantises. Their heads were tilted up to the sky and their voices were quiet, clear. I told her she's my luck, and she nodded without hearing me. I left my footprints under her kitchen floor. I pray.