Ten

Your thighs stick. A peeling sound as you reposition your legs. You’re burned again, mildly. It’s only inconvenient. Thighs themselves, already inconvenient. Your skin will take the wrinkles and the pebbly texture of the vinyl. The ridges. Bumpety bumpety bump. Your thighs spread like pancake batter. You are headed—where? The grocery store, where the air conditioning goes full blast. Otherwise the shoppers would smell everything. Rot and cheese and blood—overwhelming once noticed. You are never prepared. Not now at ten, not later in all your other decades. The smell of rot. Blood. Giant wooden fork and spoon and dots of wooden salad bowls telling time on the wall. Cash registers ringing, not beeping, through your long childhood summers. Canned grocery-store music. Some women hum along, though the music is nothing you could dance to.