What She Knew Before Nothing

by Jeni Rall

"If out of the clear blue a man says he doesn’t deserve you, it means he strayed. Pack your bags and scat." This advice was given by my great aunt Beula over a slice of buttermilk pie (a taste she'd loathed but had now forgotten) in the summer steam of ’89 - her half empty head spilling epigrams like grain so the nothingness could nest. Twelve years later, stirring a pot of fat and bitter greens, I learned she spoke the truth. "He’s feeling bad," she divined, flicking her tongue across her spoon. "But not bad enough."

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Jeni Rall, author of The Poem, lives and writes in the sausage capitol of Texas. You can read a lot of nonsense about her here.