Poem – Where the Grass Grows (By David Hernandez)

Where the Grass Grows

Sunlight narrows the shadow, spreading across the writer’s back to his face.

He wakes, ready to feed his children, walks through the halls, and out to the patio

with a leash around his neck, and a nurse by his side.

Near the cracks in the concrete that shape the letter Z, he sees their hair.

“Before I feed you with this water from the cafeteria, let me trim your hair,

so the nurses don’t call the groundskeepers.”

My teeth replaces the knife they refuse to let me use.

The taste is as real as the food sheep eat.

“The weeds can be pulled out, yet you always return to me,

my children Ruby, Rosalie, and Rosabel,

the grass that grows from inside three holes of a fenced dog pen.”