My holiday job

And now I stand barefoot and sneezing at the edge of freshly harvested crop. The truck’s motor just silenced and still smelling of fire and brimstone

I wait for the header to finish its round. Eyes squinted against the haze and dust and sun.

I watch the what wheat pouring into the truck. Wheat dust streaming out into a cloudless sky. I will drive it back to the home paddock and auguer it into the silo.  I imagine the silyk, itchy, sinking feeling of diving into the mountain of what. Death by drowning.

“Did you know that if a ram got into this crop he would grow tits, and his balls would shrink up?” Not a hint of leer. Just a fact, a flannel checked shirt and shorts too short.

“What if it was a ewe?”

“her uterus would, you know, grow and eventually fall out.”

“Oh.” I say.

What my mothers told me

Nobody told me how much it would hurt. Not my doctor, not my sister or mother.They hinted at it, though. It was almost as if there were no words for the simultaneous experience and death and brith and pain and life. They, my doctor, my sister and my mother said they would BE there! But in fact, they were not. i was alone there with a a screaming desire to escape.