Red Dirt

Has a grudge against white clothes

-Almost impossible to wash out

Kids dare each other to eat chunks of it

Some do it without

Craves it, says it tastes good.

The houses here have zinc roofs

Sometimes food is cooked outside over a fire.

Roads overlap with gulleys

bordered by wild nature

few shops, small town

word spreads fast

Draw water from tanks

Carrying buckets with naked handles are painful.

Wash clothes in plastic basin

Hang clothes on clothesline with clothespins

Careful not to drop them -the clothes

Catch the white ones! Let the colored ones fall!

You’ll have to wash the colored again

Since it’s colored you’ll be forgiven.

Scent of detergent is carried by the wind

Telling all your neighbors.

They’ll come to borrow some bleach or blue dye

-for their white clothes

But Grandma is stingy

Neighbors are lazy

A child gets sent out to go buy bleach and blue dye

I am the child who gets sent out to buy bleach and blue dye

Why me?! You have kids!

My slippers clap against my foot soles

And my soul is like the laundry;

Flailing in the wind

I’m new here, don’t know the place

I get anxious

But I found the shop, phew!

Everything is shelved

Held hostage behind a counter

Screaming:

(“YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”)

There’s one of everything here.

Vendor asks me what I want

I tell the man what I was told:

Bleach and blue dye.

He gives it to me, takes the money

There’s change left, and that's it

receipts do not exist in this town apparently.

I hope this is right,

Go back to the neighbors.

Why are you yelling at me?

I brought you bleach and blue dye.

This is the change I was given

Didn’t spend it on anything else

Prices raise? Not my problem

Don’t look at me that way please

It gives me anxiety

I feel bad, tho it’s not my fault

I return

Cousin left a freezer burned chicken out to thaw in the sunlight.

Later when they are talking

-they always talk

The black and brown maga dog, Tiger,

drags the thawed chicken away

Chicken heavy so it dragged it through the dirt

Cousin runs after the dog with a knife

Stones it

Me and my older sis watch in awe

Would she eat the chicken after recovering it?

Just let it have it.

Maga dog cries as it’s stoned and continues to eat chicken.

This... wouldn’t have happened if you had fed it

Man* comes and beat maga dog with a stick

Maga dog is afraid of Man*

Falls back

Abandons chicken

Does it matter now?

Who’s going to eat that?

Man* continues to beat Maga dog

His whimpers scratch at my soul

I stiffen at the sound of the hits.

Fleeing, Maga dog bumps into tub of dry white clothes

White clothes spill onto red dirt

Grandma yells

She orders us to retrieve the clothes- quickly!

Curses when she sees the dirt seeped in white

White stains easily.

She'll have to wash it all again, need more blue dye now

Might have to borrow some from neighbor.

I feel bad, tho, it's not my fault