Hug

By Matt Weatherbee

Maybe then Ma’d hug us. If we hung ourselves like this laundry. Maybe then she’d put the bottle down, stop yelling. The wind rips the sheet from our hands and shrink-wraps Hindi. She moans, banshee-like. We giggle and hang the sheet. The clothesline shakes. The sheet we just hung flies off, zigzagging and flip-flopping up, down, and all around. We try to catch it. But it catches us instead, tying its corners under our arms. The sheet swells, twists, and pulls us off the ground. We float up, up, up, and away. It was the greatest hug we could’ve ever gotten.