West Texas, 2007

it snows for the first time in a decade

& the whole schoolyard is flooded with dancing children.

            //

two boys stumble from the property’s tree line

into new bodies: the one in the bright red coat names

himself the outlaw, & the boy with the leftward limp

knows this means he is consigned to some type of lawman.

the boys prepare for war; now rivaled

as the seasons, or the night & day,

or the cowboy & anything not sky. 

              // 

this game has no damsel in distress, & no winner.

it always ends the same way, with both boys

lying dead in the snow riddled with bullets

from guns snapped from the chestnut tree’s lower limbs.

the wind has reddened their faces & still found their mouths

laughing like that; playing dead in a field & drunk

on their own ungrieving. 

              //

when the sun begins

to paint the world a shade darker

than it had been all day long,

the boys’ shadows grow into themselves

in the span of an afternoon. 

            //

in eight years it will snow again & both boys will be taken in the bed

of a pickup truck & buried by the side of the road.