There are some pictures down at the bottom that are headed with Maá’s writing from way back, before I could write on my own. The rats have eaten most of one side, and what’s left is wet and moldy, even after I left it out in the sun to dry. I snug up with Maá, my legs curled up in hers-but careful not to wake her because today is one of her tired days-and look through all the pictures in my box.

Sisters shouldn’t charge their own brothers for paper. Using her pen and paper only cost me my soap, and I’ll steal that back from her later anyway. I drew a picture as best I could with no colors and paper that curled from the damp. And even though Queeny doesn’t believe, and grunted about when was I ever going to grow up and could I please quit bothering her all the time, she still gave me her last bit of paper and said I could borrow her pen so I could write the words in black at the top of the page. All hot and salty fish, like the very bottom of the ocean. This morning I found a shell washed up right along with those animals. I don’t think those animals would know the difference or really care much either. Queeny says that a real bed is made with springs and cushions and feathers, and that real blankets don’t itch. Queeny says they aren’t real beds, but just old army cots and even older army blankets. In the morning, the ground still wet and foamy from where those waves washed up, I sit and trace the hundreds of animals that have swum all the way up to the tent, their faces pushing against the flaps, trying to get a look at us inside on our beds. “You hear it, né ?” I whisper, my fingers feeling for her smile in the dark. Queeny, she never tries to look in the shadows. Our maá says there are some people in this world who can see all the hidden bits and pieces of the universe blown in on the north wind and scattered about in the shadows. Queeny says I’m stupid, saying that kind of stuff. I lie in my bed, Queeny’s feet pushing against my cheek, and listen to the waves lapping at the tent. As red as the sun and as deep as the sky. Sometimes, at night, the dirt outside turns into a beautiful ocean.

Bone sparrow the fraillon