Erika T. Wurth

As Innocent as Your Mother, and Mine

She is that small Indian girl who locks herself in the bathroom to sniff aerosol as innocent as my mother, and yours, who sat with her brother in the back of the truck when they were children and sniffed the fumes from the gasoline tank and laughed and laughed all the way across the back roads the dirt from the road lifting up and filling the air with all that blurry, glittering beauty, their eyes dancing, their brain cells swimming, swimming through the water underground their little voices lifting and daddy driving, taking all of them, even that girl who locked herself in the bathroom somewhere, somewhere none of them care where as long as the truck keeps going as long as daddy never takes his hands from the wheel, as long the ride never ends, the cedar flute blowing.