Student Submission: Bear Lake

By Millie Tullis

Millie Tullis is a junior studying English and Philosophy at Utah State University. She has a gray cat named Martin Heidegger.

What were our hands doing?

All the days

we sat in a row

four sister stacked like cups

on the long cement step, waiting for dinner.

All Julys,

late afternoon sun fell

past sunburned feet

hair that hung

for breeze to breathe through

yellow and brown ropes.

Mom’s hands pulled loose hamburger through spaghetti sauce eternally in the fat yellow bowl.

We waited to scoop up the meat with little

corn-chip shovels.

Thin towels between our legs,

to soak up lake as if we had always been.

Some nights, Grandma’s hands were in the hollyhock.

Busy, to present us with little pink girls

bud for head

bloom for skirt

spine of slim toothpick.

We were to scoot them across the dinner table,

pass from our growing palms,

trading new colors of skirts.