Nerve struck, he moped deckwards,
quietly angry, the way twelve-year-olds will be,
too old to cry about a game,
too young not to feel it
all the way down.

Ten beats later,
she followed —
no sorries,
just the cardboard box
my mother had saved from the mirror delivery,
the kind you’re meant to keep,
just in case.

She said, watch.

Then it began:
first her, then him,
punching feet through board.
Enter hose
and it’s “Lucy’s Italian Movie.”
They’re in the grape vat,
laughing too hard,
burning exhaustion off
in soaked cardboard
and loud, clean violence.

Then it was mash.
Then it was soup.
Then it was holy.

They called it compost
and kicked it like faith,
beat it beneath them
until it had no use left
but laughter.

Inside, Annette Hanshaw
crooned, “Daddy, Won’t You Please Come Home?”
through the split radio of my chest,
while the magnolia bloomed so hard
it embarrassed the air.

When I made them wash it up,
I didn’t yell.
Just spoke in that tone that means,
don’t make me cry about this too.

They were still smiling
when they sprayed feet
flecked with pulp
refusing to come clean,
the end of a long joke
they didn’t know
they were telling me.