Fiction | March 02, 2021
Motherland
Isabelle Shifrin
June of that year was particularly hot, even for the high desert of southern Idaho. The sun glared down fiercely, and the cheatgrass on the hills below the basalt rimrocks all turned yellow earlier than usual, barbed heads nodding in the hot wind. The men who visited from the toothpaste branch of Galaxate Home Products said the mint crop should be good, but my father only said maybe. If you got your weeds, fertilizers, and bugs managed by the Fourth of July, then maybe.
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