Outside

"Eat that out on the porch please" came the curt voice from the kitchen. Why always outside? the little girl thought as the screen door slipped from her small hand and softly latched shut behind her.

The thin tendril of steam from her lunch, a thin burger patty with little McDonald's sized minced onions fried into the meat, was actually making her hungry for a change.

Until recently, her appetite had been a thing of the past. When her mother died in the Spring, the stone of the child's grief lodged itself in her throat, and she refused almost everything that arrived on a plate.

Before that, it was constant nausea. As her mother's death drew closer, the fear of getting sick forced a tube of Rolaids into the seven year old's hand. She had only broken down and eaten two so far, but she didn't go anywhere without them.

Now Summer was leaching into Fall, as the girl found a shady spot on her aunt's wrap-around porch bench, overlooking one of the horse pastures.

A black mare wandered to the corner near where she sat, and her tail made a soft swish -- like a switch moving through the air, as she warded off flies. The girl loved to hear horses chew. There was just something about the hollow, soft sound of their slow, methodical mooshing that she found soothing.

The screen door closing broke her attention from the horse. "You actually ate something" her aunt flatly commented as she looked at her on the bench. "Yes", she nodded as she looked down at her plate, only then fully realizing that it was empty. The woman took the plate from her lap and walked back into the house, leaving her alone again outside.

Outside.

The girl didn't know it then, but just like the stone, Outside was a piece of her now.