The old man stands in bare feet on the composite floor, gnawing on raw potatoes; a crypt of tenderness behind a barrier of golden baby teeth and thin wire rims. He swallows ardently pushing whole potatoes, passed a sixty-year-old clog in his throat.
One day, that tenderness will drop like lead from his mouth; each word cratering in the softest earth “I’m trying.”
One day, on the back of his blood he’ll remind me; with a mouthful of lead and a snarl, he will urge me to run.