Digging to China

 Digging, Cathy asks, “Mom, I don’t see China; how far must I dig to reach China?” After thinking, she smartly pivots, “Can I use this hole to plant a tree?”

 

     Years later, upon a visit, a grown Cathy looks out the kitchen window and stares at the sizable maple she had planted with the help of her dad.  

 

      “Do you remember when Dad helped me plant that tree?” Cathy asks her mother. “Right before the divorce?”

 

     Her mother nods, sipping a Kahlua and coffee. She thinks... I remember fertilizing that scrawny trunk with the minced-up trunk of that bastard!


Keith Hoerner (BS, MFA) lives, teaches, and pushes words around in Southern Illinois. He is no stranger to literary publications, and his memoir, The Day The Sky Broke Open, just published with Adelaide Books, NY/ Lisbon. Look for it on Amazon. 

 

 


 

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