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A Kid in a Box

He cries out, wedged in a twenty-nine inch wide hole, surrounded by strangers on a hilltop, without even a tree for shade.

When I grow too comfortable on my reclining sofa, bloated from excess, I come to brush the dried grass clippings off his small slab and contemplate the weight of dirt.

I dig him up. He wears a black Metallica t-shirt and torn blue jeans. I sit on his stone and he lays on the mound of overturned earth. We smoke cigarettes and watch traffic speed along the highway below.

"Does it do your soul good to see me?" I ask.

I wonder what else sounds like a kid crying in a box. A bird screaming out from the shock of landing on an exposed electrical wire? Tires squealing on wet asphalt? I ask him.

Now is the time to plant a shade tree, since the digging is done. He seems to go along with the idea, but I had not thought to bring a sapling.

Next time, then.

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