There is a wall around my house but it is not mine. There is a fat wall of small stones that is not fit to talk about, and this short wall of large stones? The same, but looking at it also gives me headaches.

There is a wall but it is my mother's. She wraps rubber bands around the waists of rocks and tucks notes into their belts so that bits of the wall have tiny flapping wings full of secrets. Ask her how to get around the wall, through it, over it. Go on, ask her. There is a wall here but it is my father's. It runs from the house clear to the crick and back up the other side. My mother father's wall is short and fat and tall and rough and stone. My father says this big small wall keeps the rabbits out of the crops and the boys out of my panties.

Mother father made this wall for me, but it is not mine. Gloria once said her mother made her pies. I said my mother makes me barricades. She makes me forts and bank vaults and sheepfolds. Pies sounded nice though.  Gloria said her father made her dollhouses. I said my father makes me safe.

Sometimes these headaches knock me out under the flapping secret wings of belted rocks. In that shade I puke my breakfast and lose words. Mother calls, "Are you all right? Do you need some Tang? A towel?" I say, "Bring that thing… like an elf in the water?" "Sprite?" she asks.  "Yes," I say. "That one."

Father mother's wall is falling apart. Two stones on the ground this morning. This rock, this one, I take this one for mine. I wrap a rubber band around its waist and in there I tuck a note. At the shortest part of the rough short tall fat wall I throw it over. If there are people on the outside I hope they will find my belted white rock and the message it carries: There is a wall but it is not mine.