how to: kə-rä'tē

 

how to: kÉ™-rä’tÄ“
by Halifax
In my backyard there was a knothole on the fence.
I watched the world through that knothole
from under an ant-infested mimosa tree.
Walking past my knothole were three boys,
like me but older.
One saw me looking through the knothole.
He asked me who I was.
I lied to him.
The sound of his tone became like my father
when he was mad and I couldn’t figure out why.
I took my sister’s jump rope
and pushed the turned wooden handle through my knothole.
One of the boys took the end
and pulled it off the rope far easier then I thought possible.
I had dragged my sister into it.
I knew how she felt about her belongings
and I left my knothole and the opened gate
to retrieve the end of her jump rope.
The three boys stood there daring me to take it back.
One of them held the end and laughed in a scoff.
He told me he knew karate. I said I did too (not knowing what karate was).
He threw the end of the jump rope down.
His friend scraped me on my arm with a white clothes hanger
that appeared from thin air.
I picked up my sister’s jump rope handle
and ran to my mother down the alley between the apartments.
She looked at me with distracted eyes that told me
I at the wrong time needed her.
I told her about the fight and the boys.
She told me to go back in the house
and said I needed to learn to solve my own problems.