Summer 2012

Dad brings me outside

one summer afternoon.

The blazing hot sun burning me

like my head is in the oven.

I don’t know why I’m out here.

My friends are down the block swimming.

I walk into the shed

and the smell of gasoline

hits me like I had just been punched.

I pull the string of

the lawn mower for the first time.

Dad says I’m gonna be

the new landscaper.

It was the first of many

times I cut the grass.

Dust getting in my eyes,

sneezing like crazy.

But I kept mowing

and the other kids kept swimming.