Michelle DeLouise-Ashmore
More bugbite than girl
I dig X’s into my arms & legs, bites already beginning
to swell into welts across my body. Somewhere in my memory
I hear my mother telling me I am only making it worse & I know.
Don’t listen. I never do. I like the look of it, the feel
of it, reminding me that I am here, once again,
more bugbite than girl.
Summer sun seeps into my skin, my hair, my fingernails, stained
yellow from digging into the peels of bruised tangerines.
Juice running down my chin, spilling & stinging into the bug bites
that line my arms, cut-off shorts tickling the tops of my thighs.
Charlie sniffs around nearby, looking for something to roll in—
a dead snake in the grass, a pile of shit
from one of the stray cats who live here too.
Sweat lines my upper lip & it is summer in the Ozarks again & I am
listening as the cicadas & katydids call my name from the trees.
It feels like a homecoming,
every time.
Michelle DeLouise-Ashmore is a Native Hawaiian poet living and writing in Northwest Arkansas. By day she teaches high school English and by night she writes silly little poems. Her work can be found in Anti-Heroin Chic, Hawai’i Review, Clementine Unbound, and more.