Barn wood creaked
under a blistered roof.
Cicadas rasped like torn zippers,
gnats frenzied in heat-stung hush.
Pappaw’s tools stood like deacons,
rakes, blades, shovels,
a rust-bitten vise
clung to the bench like a wounded jaw,
bolted there decades before I was named.
Its grip slick from the sweat
of every hand that disappeared.
The dust smelled of grease
and something sweeter,
like old rain
hidden in burlap.
Out back,
the wheelbarrow slept
beside the seed spreader,
its mouth open as if to confess.
I built stories in those shadows,
called it a castle,
called it a ship,
called it the edge of the world
before I knew what endings meant.
I was a boy
who heard grief in hinges,
saw narrowed eyes
in the heads of railroad spikes,
spoke aloud to heroic hammers
like they might answer.
I named everything
before I knew
what not to love.
It wasn’t make-believe.
It was how the world arrived to me,
in stories,
in gestures,
in objects
aching to speak.
The *** leaned inward,
as if listening.
The seed spreader waited
like it still had something to offer.
The wheelbarrow, tilted,
cradling sleeping rain
and maybe me,
once.