Treehouse

K. A. Webb

Darlin’, I’ve fashioned false eyelids of blue cellophane and brought a bucket in case I get to singing that fight song like some hullabaloo broke loose. I’ll only warn you once about the moss on the stones—better let it alone. Hey, easy now, I didn’t mean anything. I can’t help it. Are you the kind of man who yells at fire? Are you the kind of man who irons his skin? I didn’t think so. Listen, if you’ll tell me again in that false Southern hum, “I want a woman with gumption,” then I’ll tell you to wear me long like your melancholy jaw, wear me yellow in your summer suit, wear me down, down until my bare feet are inches deep beneath the wet Alabama ground.

K. A. Webb lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she teaches at UAB, writes for Weld for Birmingham, and tends to a dog called Hank.

Also see her poem Resting in a Café.

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