Thaw

I opened the garage door
and found the floor washed in blood.
A heavy, sickly-sweet rot clung
like wet wool to my throat.

The freezer door — left open by my own hand —
had let the whole summer thaw:
fence-mending, cattle-chasing, baling hay
now pooled in a red accusation across the concrete.

That blood was the liquid history
of thirteen head on our small farm.
My father blasted powder crews by day,
then came home
to low impatient moos and shirts dark with work.

Saturday mornings at the stockyard.
I drifted toward merchant tables—coins, cards—
while he studied the ring.
The auctioneer’s fast Appalachian tongue
cutting through manure and wet hay.

They dragged the freezer outside,
hosed it down, mopped the floor.
The worst shame I ever felt
was my parents on their knees
in the blood I let loose.