SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN
In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country
One classmate’s father’s suicide with shotgun
splattered walls
One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch
One with leukemia, white as the snow
One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and
mysterious as the language
One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for
She’s only interested in grade 9 boys
One bruised heart
Not yet hard enough to be broken