Carl Little

The sunbox lies in pieces, its strips of aluminum foil flaking away to the wind, tanning platform broken up for kindling. Planted grass sprouts where the path once sharply turned to the left circumventing underbrush, there the man (a boy then) stumbled on beauty’s wrath: pale sisters yelling him off, scrambling for clothes to cover. All has been cleared, thick cat briar raked into piles and set ablaze, invincible ailanthus stacked for dump. All’s clear and calm save his childhood rushing head- long through tearing thickets, and the sisters, barely glimpsed against reflective flashing, laughing after him, then lying back to catch all the sullen autumn sun they can.