The Frog

Yep, the frog was definitely on the thorn. Squirming. Right there, just by the other shore, alongside a Mountain Dew bottle and some mossy stones. Who wants to see such a thing? Oh, what a doomed frog. Dangling basically by its own skin. I said, Frog, try not to think about where you are going. Don’t worry about where you have been. You are snagged, somehow caught by death within a leap, and I don’t know what to tell you. I left the creek and the forest and went to my bedroom and listened to the ceiling. I ate two Pop-Tarts. Then I saw my father’s car outside the window. It looked like a bar of soap made of sunshine. What kind of world is this? I removed three tires (the two fronts and the spare) from the car and rolled them through the woods and into the creek. What a sweet commotion! But this had no real effect (not that the crawdads and catfish don’t appreciate the extra shelter)-I mean no effect for the frog. The frog was twitching. The clouds just glided along, and the wind brought a little flurry of white flowers to the water. It disgusted me. I went back inside and sucked on some ice cubes. My teeth ached. Then I entered my mother’s bedroom (it seemed like some sort of cave) and grabbed all of her bras (it was odd to grip so many bras-they felt sometimes big, sometimes small, sometimes lumpy, sometimes sheer) and carried them into the forest. It took three trips. I stuffed the bras into the hollow of an old oak tree and shot bottle rockets up after until it all caught on fire. Sparks and curls of smoke. Then huge, crackling flames. This forest was going to go! The neighbors ran from their houses with buckets. Sirens filled the air. We fought all night and the next day and the next night, and the sky rained embers and the forest was vaporized. Charred black fields, smoldering stumps. With my lungs full of cinders and heat, I walked down to the creek, and there it was, hanging like a sin, the frog. I removed my clothing and waded into the water, murky, warm, its surface a gray film of ash. On my belly and naked I crawled, closer, closer, like some giant, pale salamander, wait a minute, I thought, it isn’t a frog. It is a child’s green mitten! How wonderful this life can be.