PORCHES by Sofia Fontenot (16, Texas)*

this porch is made of dirt on the edge of a parking lot and the edge of a forest. i can touch the air as i walk through it, so sticky it is with humidity. grown-ups mill about, even stickier in their sweaty running clothes. their tanks cling to their beer bellies and their shorts can’t hide saggy skin and stretch marks. i don’t feel like looking up to see their faces; they must be aliens; they must be new neighbors.
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i wade until i find an ice chest that is finally my size, with soda cans that fit me instead of waterbottles filled with wine that slip out of my grasp. 

the adults bring dogs. the dogs look me in the eye when they speak to me, shaking coats that get me wet and thumping their tails against my thigh. but even these dogs will look up to the adults for instruction. i pet them and laugh because their owner is watching, and when the pair walks away i rub my slobbery hands on my shorts.

the forest here feels more approachable than the adults who flock like moths to the stadium lights. the branches, respectfully, do not reach higher than my ears and offer me treats of mulberries if i decide to be swaddled by them. here in the dark, off the running trails, i can be a deer safely out of the headlights.


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everything is on the porch. the dining table, heavy and stone. the fairy lights my dad strung from eaves to banana tree. the barbecue, wavering with its own heat. this is what saturdays look like. my dad never smiles so much as on saturdays. his spatulas and tongs lounge around so inconspicuously they could take sips from his wine and no one would ever notice. 

my mom balances her elbow on the back of a metal chair and talks to him about their friends whose parents have died and who have to schedule doctor’s appointments for mammograms and cholesterol. i have a sheet of paper in front of me that i am drawing little people onto. they have long, pointy chins and feet like paper boats. 

my parents have left the window open and a parade of moths and fruit flies find their way inside. i watch them idly, then heave myself to my feet. they will lay eggs in our pears. i must stop them. 

i pass through a portal into the house, where the heat is an alien presence reaching through the window and my parents now chitter in a Charlie Brown tongue. i shove the window down, snap the locks into place. from here the gravity of the fairy lights and tiki torches is lost. from here this saturday backyard is a tv show i’ve seen too many times. i think i’ll stay inside.



we are all on the porch of the Big House. waterbottles infest every available surface- picnic tables, wooden chairs, trying to blend in with the army of sunscreen. i admire the names on each one, how they might be in precise cursive or printed out or scrawled in a strip of masking tape. some have unfinished friendship bracelets dangling off the handles. i try to match each waterbottle to a kid in a camp shirt. 

kids in camp shirts run around the yard like ants, tossing a frisbee. it lands in the fountain. kids in camp shirts sit criss-cross on top of tables, gaze bobbing between a hand of playing cards and the stack in the center. i don’t know how to play that game. 

i have been very hydrated today and now i have to pee. the Big House is Big. the ceilings stretch a dozen feet high, to a woven straw roof, and my unadjusted eyes turn the couches and bunk beds to monsters and bears. when the door shuts behind me, the sounds outside become blurry. the room is at first a blissful cool that soon turns to chill from my sweat. a ghost in a camp shirt brushes past my shoulder on its mission to the porch and when the door opens it’s like a second of a familiar song. 

this time, i follow the ghost. i leave the quiet’s careful hug and step back onto the porch.