Published in Atomic Flyswatter Vol. 1, 2020

Withered and acrid are these stinging-nettle boys.

Their shallow, blackened sneers cuff my ankles in red lace and my mother, pitiless, shrugs the blood away having clearly given up on my wearing shoes.

I ran by night, from what I did not know.

By that first pillowing of dawn I found my legs etched raw, as if by dying captive men that count the days on walls of tide choked caves, and prison cells and on the ribs of tombs when one gets mixed up in that unsavory business of being buried alive.

They scored my skin to play a round of tic-tac-toe to pass their time incarcerate, and still I sing only of their thorns.