The Girl with the Louding Voice

by Abi Daré

I roof my eyes from the morning sun.

jump. I want to shout at the night and tell it never to become a tomorrow, but Kayus is sleeping like a baby, and I don’t want to wake him, so I take the edge of cloth, make it like a ball, and bite on it hard and taste the corn from this afternoon and the salt of my tears.

I hang my head down, feeling a thick, heavy cloth as it is covering me. The thick cloth of shame, of sorrow, of heart pain.