neighbor kids in kansas beating the hell out of each other / joyfully

The metal rope frayed under the frame of boy molars during this violence game us kids played near a rusted car and a fish tank by the empty fields. Gardner farmland, where wicks of wheat stood pick-eaten, from long before — today, it was warm out.

We were kids — we were perfect. Stuck in the backyard, we would stand adjacent and look inside each other; how much hope could we really contain? How much should we, can we wring out? All over me, even now, there are still those loose welds and fingerprints. For each of us, a black-lit bedroom

back home housed something forbidden. We knew. When we fought, we were exposing the dirt on our mothers' lips — our fathers' plastic lines. The sweat bore fruit in our kitchens and brows and told us better than the cathode dreams, the buzzing in our ears — the blood turned.

The copper salt, our celebration. We'd pour it out everywhere and in the sand,

the gas light would go out and nothing was gentrified, it was raw. In the construction site, we were just wrestling for the cause. In different ways each week, we picked a wrestler and fucked each other up.

Decked and teeth-cuffed, we came home flinching with bully trust. We called each other by our own names and no context or the prefix, my best friend.

Alone at sundown, I would cut barefoot toward my unlocked door, clutching mud-soaked shoes and their laces in my purple hands.

My mother would see me and spill her greeting on the table like ceramic clashing, shrieking at my tender face. I would grin, say something like, I lived. Over salisbury and asparagus, I would think about Pokémon while my body swept in its blood.

I think I was learning, even then.

d.S. randoL (she/they) is living timid in NFK, VA. She is published or forthcoming in Bullshit Lit, Passages North, Door is A Jar Magazine, and more. You can find her full publications and eerie acoustic EP, "Guitar Knots," at www.linktr.ee/dSrandoL.