Trinity
The boys are here again with hard knuckles and bony wrists, their teeth sweating in the sun. The one who loves science, and so will amount to something some day, has filled a box with frogs. They shoulder in to see throats bulging blue and green like one hundred small balloons dipped in oil. The scent of swamp carries and the humidity so thick it drives the boys into their shadows, into sidewalk cracks where weeds slip the blade.
The boy leans in, grabs the largest one, stretching its legs along our Savior’s cross and securing it with shoestring. When he is finished, he cocks his head.
Taut belly; patient eyes.
A sharp stick invokes the trinity but dying is slow work and didn’t Jesus take three days or was that the resurrection? The boys have dimes for orange popsicles at the A&P–scrape lint from a firecracker then, plug the mouth–take, eat. Do this in remembrance of me.
Sulfur now, gut-smeared pavement, a boy tossing his dime and blotting the sun.
“Heads the A&P, tails one more.”
Beside him, frogs groan like old men rising from easy chairs to fetch the evening paper. Somewhere a woman sobbing–her voice scaling the tomb walls.
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