connected, like Mason & i used to think it fun to tie two cheap sleds to the back of his ATV & let his dad drive us over wintered fields, jolting on stubs of stalks, but now we know
what happens: the crack of plastic, tattered bits dragging from rope, Mason vapored into crisp air like my own panting breath. i couldn’t fathom where he’d gone until the engine died, and his screaming came
loud as our friend Jesse’s when he tripped into the open maw of a harvester three summers back, losing cherry-tomato hands with quick-sprayed bite. (he told me later he’d stayed awake
through the careflight, that in midair he realized he wanted to be a mechanic, though he had no clue the surgeon would sew him back together, perfect perforated lines marking momentary departure
for the rest of his life.) i traced shrieks back to Mason’s body, blood flecks igniting the snow. his shadow
flickered and i ran faster than his father, tugged his frame from Ohio’s grasping dirt, and helped him stand, his arm
round my neck the whole way home, where he finally let go, looked away. we glue together the sled a few days later, but we’re missing a piece— the one under Mason’s ass—where stalk shoved through
plastic, cloth, & flesh. we laugh, pretend we haven’t glimpsed the land’s frozen belly, where in a moment, frayed roots softened, refused for now the offering of broken body.