Maiden Mary
Four-Foot Something
Four foot something, and all of it decided.
She lived her whole life on Providence Mill Road — four rooms, half an acre, muscadine vines and rusted wire.
Born the year the banks folded, she fetched water in a rusted tin pail from a creek that didn’t ask, only gave cold.
One of thirteen beneath a tin roof — each a hunger, a hand, a prayer half-finished.
Mill country: textile looms, furniture frames, the church the only architecture touting prominence, centrality, enough —
until you cross the threshold and find yourself on the floor.
Her first husband (owner) — G-d’s man, preaching with fists, leaving more bruises than holiness.
She endures him like winter: lips tight, spine straight, hands busy.
She grew things from nothing: okra, tomatoes, grief.
Knew how to prune death from a branch, burn the flue clean, smile with her mouth closed.
She raised a Hotdog, a Pattie, and a named boy Boo
who threw his braces in the creek — like her but not
On October 1st 19 and 74 — they made it official:
For Ten 10 Dollars. Vance and Mary owned an estate by entirety —
which is when two people hold something
until one of them cain’t.
She didn’t choose providence.
She simply stayed.
where the mill roared, until it didn’t
pressing against silence.
until V’s heart said, ‘goodbye.’
After, she spoke more, to the dog than the world.
Named her Princess — as if something, somewhere, still deserved softness.
The house stayed twenty years behind: toys in a trash can, foil-wrapped sweet ‘taters, the patterned green linoleum curling like memory.
reminding me she never left street in Catawba County, never had to.
Grief travels well — found her in the garden, in the click of The Price Is Right, in cold livermush tasting exactly like the past.
She was hard-headed.
Said so herself.
Now she’s gone. What remains: the ghosts of Princess, the first husband, his g-d, the boy who threw the braces in the creek— and stories no one tells, held by people who won’t say why they’re crying.
The road is still there. Half an acre. Same ground she pulled from. cold.
but i still smell the wood smoke, it stays in your hair
long after the dream ends.
and long after you think you’re done.
