In Papa’s bedroom, I was emptying what naughty girls like best into Jane’s lips—when Mama—hands by her puckered up cheeks, stepped in. Where are your clothes, she said. You hole-in-the-wall kids.

I said, Mama.

Let’s get dressed, she said.

She stepped boots to my box and flicked her hand. The box’s lid opened, like this.

Mama’s hips bent, and she looked, way down. When Mamas look—they look. When Mamas see, inside of things is what they see. Other people, see outsides.

Not Mamas.

Mamas and Papas are different in this wooded, hole-in-the-wall place. When Papas look, they see outsides. The road, is all the road looks like, to Papas. When Mamas listen, they hear leaves swirl by the made from dirt road, but not the road, itself, whispering.

But, insides, have nowhere to hide from Mamas.

What should you wear, Mama said, looking at Jane on her knees. What she saw made her giggle. She reached, and the inside of this box seemed different, than how this box, on the outside, looked, while Mama reached her hand down inside.

Don’t worry, she said.

What she brought up, was like an apple. On the outside. It was round. Red, this thing.

On each of its sides, things hung. Like things do.

It was not a collar. But that, it also looked like, on the outside.

Mama walked with it to Jane.

She held each of its sides, this not a collar thing. In its middle, between Mama’s hands, pressing Jane’s puckered up lips, this inside was not an apple thing pressed.

Open up, Mama said.

Tyler Dempsey is the author of a book of poems called, Newspaper Drumsticks. His work appears in Heavy Feather Review, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, trampset, Bending Genres, and the like. He's a fiction reader at X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine. Find him on Twitter @tylercdempsey.