Marty Cherryseed (Birdie's Writing Lessons)

My youngest son crawls beneath my gramma's quilt these mountain summer mornings. I brace myself to brave the scuffed pine floor in my bare feet as he flops on his stomach and places vintage comics on my extra pillow. I leave him to my warm bed, leave him to carefully turn fragile pages, to become a penguin in a starched tuxedo, a lump-headed dinosaur chasing foolish researchers in some forgotten rainforest. His older brother doesn't join us, doesn't wake until I force his eyelids apart with a sharp shake.

Two days after school ended, Martin didn't carry comics to my morning bed. I tried to leave the sleep on my pillow, to drop it from my arms with a groan, a brush, but it clung to my skin, heavy, proud. I wrapped a chenille robe over faded men's pajamas and prepared to stretch my arms, my mind toward the ball of fire that hesitated along the horizon. My legs creaked as I formed the first asana. Martin giggled.

"Mom, you sound like an old lady."

Read the rest of my first official Writing Lesson at BlogHer here.