Freshly Cut Grass

By Evan Litsios

She stood with her girlfriends munching three leaf clovers
      but yards like ours
         had a rifle
            behind every blade of grass.

Dad whispered, “Go get that gun,”
           and these sweet ladies
            cracked with the air
       as the shot shattered silence.

All three jolted, one dropped—her two confused friends
            stood frozen, until instincts kicked in,
       bolting, shooting stars
to the treeline.

All words spoken became prayer
            every action dripped
         into ritual. A knife performed
    what knives were made for.

Dad’s hammerheld hands
   pulled back the dam, drained out
         the reservoir of hoofmarks in the mud and friends
            finding each other in strange fields.

I still see her eye
             black like burnt oil staring right at me,
         hardening like quenched steel as last light
            fled the November sky.

No one taught us boys how to cry,
             but the yard got three days of rain
                   and a layer of
                  freshly cut grass.

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Evan Litsios is a dad, husband, son, brother, friend, skater, snowboarder, copywriter, poet, and forest enthusiast. He recently began sending his poems out into the world and is chewing on his first chapbook. He lives by the woods in Vermont. Find his work in Torment Mag and The Clackamas Literary Review.