Meg Sefton's Blog, page 54

Biscuits…Flashnano Day 9: Write a story containing a song lyric

John Prine has died of complications from Covid 19. His music and lyrics meant so much to me. I wrote this about a year ago when I was struggling with some personal issues. His work has been a balm and joy. RIP

Within A Forest Dark

Image from The Pride of the Household, 1900, flickr

She had come late to making biscuits. Divorce. Cancer. A child left for college. She had come late to keeping flour on hand. Buttermilk. Cold butter. She had cooked a lot of gourmet in her married years, and been on too many fad diets. And now it was just her and the dog. And later this weekend a stranger who wants to meet her, sleep with her, the last of his kind, she imagines.

She turns on youtube music starting with her midlife music crush John Prine singing with Kacey Musgraves on a cruise ship. “Mind your own biscuits,” is the heart of the song. She smiles at Kacey and John singing and strumming and gives her dog a treat she keeps in the crystal biscuit barrel, a very expensive gift from her marriage.

She doesn’t make the biscuits fancy, cutting…

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Grass

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owl by Bradley Stephen Wise, flickr

That Easter, blood came up through the St. Augustine when you stepped on it, like water coming up through a saturated carpet, raising a footprint. Forensic geologists struggled to find answers. Politicians blamed the secret disease on the other side of the world. Everyone was dying.

Basket

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bloody bunny girl by David Kent, flickr

The Easter we had to stay inside our apartments, we put our baskets outside the door. Even adults. At 5 a.m. the staff would fill them. I took my dog out at 1 a.m. but what was already in mine were bunny bones, a headless doll, and a blood red marzipan cross.

Jesus

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Sonse, Ospedale delle Bambole, Rome, flickr

I am not supposed to be touching little Jesus inside my purse while I am at church. But Uncle Danny gave me Jesus. Now he’s dead. I say sorry Jesus in case I touch his no no square. Mama gives me a look. Don’t worry, Lina, Jesus says to me.

Children

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He and She Gardeners by Carol VanHook, Children’s Magical Gardens in Sarasota Florida, flickr

The children board the Amtrak in Winter Park, Florida for the safe zones, the bodies of their parents lingering in the air having been part of mass cremations at the old orange juice factory. Some children became distracted by the songs of the ice cream truck. These children later died.

Hunt

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Illinois Agricultural Record, flickr

Papa was always hurried with the egg hunt in the woods behind the house. I would skin my knees or dirty my tights before church. He made me dig though eggs were never there. I saw a small bunny once. I sat down and cried. That was the last time.

Blood

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Children ready for school during the 1918 flu epidemic – Starke. State Library and Archives of Florida

The spring Mama died was the spring she saw blood dripping from the cross at church. It was the spring I saw children with masks on in the yard. They wore old timey clothes like Alfalfa and Darla and Spanky wore in the Little Rascals. They wanted me to play.

Creme

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Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

At the funeral reception there was a mound of chocolate crème eggs in a silver bowl. I chose the one in pink foil. It was small. I popped it into my mouth in anticipation of its smooth sweet center. Instead I tasted something iron and gelatinous: blood.

Bunny

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Toy rabbit (taken for “Smith’s Weekly), Sidney, 1945, Sam Hood

Before the travel ban I flew to attend a funeral. Everyone wore gloves and masks. The large man beside me spilled over into my seat. His unshorn feet and hands were a large hairy bunny’s. He smiled at me with an unmasked face. There was blood in his teeth.

Butter Witch: Irish folklore in Appalachia(Happy St. Patty’s)

Within A Forest Dark

temporalata, witch hut 1, flickr

On Saturdays, Mama set me down in front of the churn. On summer days, she set me on the porch to look out upon the woods, to look for fairies and woodsprite, to keep the woodland green at bay, she said, lest it overtake the house and we be lost. On winter days, I set inside not far from the stove but far enough that a witch’s spell that come down through the flue would not frustrate my efforts. The spell would come on account of Ms. Maybre, Mama would say, the spinster, who casts spells such as that of the butter witch. On account of that happening, we gotta stick the poker from the fire in the butter and break the witch’s back and get the butter going again.

I always wondered if she meant Ms. Maybre would have a broken back. But Ms…

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