dirt.

he grew up playing legos and picking his nose like all little boys do. his pants were always a bit too short because he just "grew like a weed." he learned to play guitar in middle school because he thought it was the secret to his girl troubles, but for some reason the calloused fingers strumming the chords of his first original song felt so right, so he kept at it. his mother had a garden. he never remembered what she grew growing up, because he was too busy making mudpies. he liked the feel of earth in his hands; even now. the way the soil and dirt crumbled in his hands, feeling something that raw...that real...he'd always come back to that. he remembered his grandfather's tales of war. the blood, the savages, the patriots, the victims, the sorrow, the way it felt to kill a man. and he knew that it could never be him. he stuck to his six strings, writing lyrical protests, becoming everything his father had disregarded. he fell in love at 17 with a girl with flowers in her hair, and all in one moment he wanted this life he'd been too scared to imagine before. and when he buried his father at 18, he signed his name on the dotted line. now 6 years later, he's feeling that dirt again. sifting it through his fingers, but this time knowing it's mixed with spilt blood. as he loads another magazine, he remembers the flowers in her hair so long ago, and prepares to kill a boy. couldn't be much older than 17.