Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Jesmyn Ward

“I got it,” he says, but then he looks at me for the first time and his eyes ain’t hard no more. “You go ahead.” And then he turns and goes back to the shed.

But it follows, even as I follow the trail of tender organ blood Pop has left in the dirt, a trail that signals love as clearly as the bread crumbs Hansel spread in the wood.

Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things: it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants.

getting grown means learning how to work that current: learning when to hold fast, when to drop anchor, when to let it sweep you up. And it could be something simple as sex, or it could be something as complicated as falling in love, or it could be like going to jail with your brother, thinking you going to protect him.”

“Said there’s spirit in everything. In the trees, in the moon, in the sun, in the animals. Said the sun is most important, gave it a name: Aba. But you need all of them, all of that spirit in everything,

to have balance. So the crops will grow, the animals breed and get fat for food.”