When we were seven,
you whispered that Satan loves onion grass.
He gnashes up the green stalks and swallows
the fruiting bodies whole.
At evening, we trowled a hole under the bracken.
We were together
in the heat of summer sidewalks exhaling.
We ducked under the green curtains
on hands and knees, and went to work
on the red dirt. We left him a smelly, stalky offering
and got dirt in our fingernails.
I put on a brave face; I always played the skeptic.
But I was secretly too afraid of Satan
to smooth the last of the soil. (Could he smell me?)
You said: that’s the most important part,
and the next morning
there was a single mashed up onion left.

I’ve been thinking about how small
that forest room was. And how,
because no adult
could cram in comfortably,
I never knew if an animal had dug
the onions up that night,
or if you had snuck from your dark house
in the red morning
and snuck them away
to trick me.
You were always the angry one.
I love that. But I wonder
what you were thinking that morning.
I wonder if the round O
of onion, or the taste
of the curvy moon
made you smile.