“Breaking into my Great-Grandmother’s house”
Corey Miller
after she’s dead to make toast / cheap wheat bread from the gas station hugging her backyard / smeared with expired Concord jelly / out of a Smucker’s glass jar designed with bashful Porky Pig. The new home owners / who demanded my Aunt Marilyn pay / for a fresh septic system don’t understand / the antiquity here: the davenport converting / into a lumpy bed during my illness / to watch The Price Is Right & The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the basement / where we’d eat holidays, the styrofoam protection for her air conditioning unit I’d transform / into army bases to battle the kids / down the street after we exited the school bus. They fenced in the yard / with treated oak posts one can / easily squeeze through / past the back porch glider & decaying crab apple tree / where the cousins from California would chase me. I wish I could silently cry / here while the new owners snore / like I cried at my great-grandmother’s funeral / when the priest questioned the family / which details the eulogy should highlight. The way our family hesitated. How I choked / when wanting to explain / my version of her. So proud / of my attached younger self that could fit a whole slice of slathered bread in his mouth / at one time.
Corey Miller was a finalist for the F(r)iction Flash Fiction Contest (’20) and shortlisted for The Forge Flash Competition (’20). His writing has appeared in Booth, Pithead Chapel, Third Point Press, Hobart, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. He reads for TriQuarterly, Longleaf Review, and Barren Magazine. When Corey isn’t brewing beer for a living in Cleveland, he likes to take his dogs for adventures. Follow him on Twitter @IronBrewer or at www.CoreyMillerWrites.com