salt

Salt

Last Thanksgiving,

My mother over salted the stuffing.

Dad gave her a shiner.

I cried and I tasted the salt too.

At Christmas, the driveway iced over.

It was a thick palette of cold crystal.

Dad threw some rock salt over it.

I didn’t see him at the time,

but I heard his burdened groan.

I still slipped running to the mailbox,

I was eager for Grandma’s Christmas money.

The fall and the ice tore my jeans.

The salt pierced my skin like hook meets worm.

I stained the driveway with my red

And tasted the salt again.

That summer,

Buddy got hit by a car.

His back legs were crushed, mangled,

one of them holding onto his body

by only a dangling milky white tendon.

Dad shot him in the head

right then and there

in the street

in front of me.

He put Buddy out of his misery.

He did the same for himself on my birthday,

but I was all out of salt.