A fifth-grade bully, a blossoming romance, a late-night crash
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Carolyn Miller lives in San Francisco, where she writes, paints, and works as a freelance copyeditor. Her books of poetry are After Cocteau and Light, Moving.
My mother was always afraid I would grow up to disgrace her and my family, and I did.
The rooms were filled with the smells of food. The only sounds were those of the house slowly settling around us, and the birds outside in the walnut trees, and an occasional car going by on the blacktop road.
It’s summer, and I’m lying outside on a quilt on the grass. The quilt is one of our old ones, thin gray fabric on both sides with lumpy batting in between, top and bottom held together by short lengths of coarse red string pulled though the layers at intervals and tied into knots.