Yard Work

The sun irradiates my driveway

Baking the already hardened concrete with an onslaught of UV rays

I am a wet rag being wrung dry in the Arizona heat

As the volleyball impales itself into my tanned forearm

Only to recoil and arc back to my sister.

Galvanized metal slapping against rock echoes in the distance;

A shovel hits dirt in a syncopated 4/4 rhythm,

Creating a background of percussion

Subconsciously shaping our movements

The silence short after precedes my inevitable servitude.

Like a modern day Medusa, after I lock eyes with my father this wet rag has turned to stone.

The gravity of his stare rips me from my driveway

And sends me hurtling toward an endless pile of fragmented shale.

A serrated shovel is my racket

I am a tennis player hitting against a wall that refuses to lose

My muscles tear apart with every beleaguered swing

Splintering shards of my stone body

That flies into the pile of rubble

Until the shale and I are one