We emptied the car of its innards:
slashed seats and peeled leather paneling,
gutted the radio and twisted off the steering wheel.
We pulled the film from Dad’s tapes out of the sun roof
like they were intestines.

Our feet, slick with dew, crunched
on the backs of crickets; the cicadas grit
and grind- and spring arrived like disease,
too quickly, overwhelming.

But we are small people
and like a hand around our throats,
we remember winter long after she has gone.

We left the skeleton on the front yard,
let it rust on sporadic, balding grass
with melted gravel clinging to the husks of its tires.
It was a shell, hollow: trunk wide open
like a gaping mouth. This was the month

we molted.The month we shed.
We carved animals into our teeth,
our eyes bruised like peaches,
knees and knuckles the color of ripe plums.

We stole two bikes from the park,
cutting wire like hair, riding them with the seats torn
off, standing the whole time. One night,

we threw mangoes off the bridge,
watching them explode between passing cars
into shredded orange collages.

We ate a few, the juices dripping
down our faces, dry and sticky onto our cheeks,
the hollowed pits rotting below.