Trigger warning: sexual abuse
that’s where he stuck his hand down my pants
she pointed
where the grass looked deeper rooted in the shade,
though maybe i was finally not blinded
by the beaming littoral sun. the sun
fortified the smell of citrus
rotting fresh into the ground,
steaming up into the air.
I watched an orange fall
into the cool green grass
beneath the tree.
I saw how it would rest
like those around it.
festering slowly,
almost invisibly,
like a wound beneath
heavy cloaked skin.
how easy it is to __________
i thought
as my mother showed me around
the green grassy park
she came to as a child.
Lucia Rachel Shpuntoff is a poet and educator working in the Boston area. Her work has previously been published in Laurel Moon Magazine and Glass Mountain. She was awarded an Academy of American Poets 2024 College Prize for her poem “Twelve years since the kidnap and murder that shook the country: the second trial begins.”
