Tye-Dyeing

We were on the back porch,
breathing in the humid air,
wet with the smell of the dye
we were sloshing on the wooden table.
Wearing sunglasses, without gloves,
with smoke and Jimmy Buffet
drifting out the door, we were
slapping mosquitoes and
soaking up the white hot sun.
We rolled up soft cotton shirts,
twisted and knotted them, and
bound them tight with thick, heavy
rubber bands. We dipped them into
the buckets; purple, blue, green,
yellow and orange saturated the white,
crawled up it, slowly darkening as it
splashed, hot on my fingers, and dripped
down my bare legs, leaving
dark, wet streaks. We turned on the hose,
loose, fizzing out at the nozzle, and ran
the shirts under the freezing water,
watching it run colors on the dirty bricks
and pool into mud on the grass.
We hung the shirts up on the line,
strung up high between two trees,
out of the reach of the puppy leaping
up to bite them as they blew in
the hot wind, baking, drying stiff.
We went inside, me slipping from
my flip flops squishing,
and I was dizzy from the sun,
seeing fuzzy pink spots, and my
hands were dyed dark black.