Page 108 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies
Not boot prints at first, only scuffs where weight tried to be light.
I crouch and touch the edge of a print with one gloved finger.
Men who grew up on concrete drag their feet.
Men who grew up on mud set down the outside of their heel.
This is neither.
This is a man who has walked quiet in snow for enough winters to know how to make a lie of it.
My jaw goes tight.
Barn first.
The latch looks bothered, not broken.
I push in, let my eyes adjust, smell hay and oil and the sharp cold of iron waiting for heat.
The tool wall is still a tool wall, which is a small grace.
The locked cabinet I keep for things that cut or shoot is untouched.
The floor tells me someone stood by the back stall long enough to leave thaw, then lifted a box from the shelf.
I know the shape because I packed it.
Small sockets, metric and standard, nested like teeth.
It is gone.
Men steal cash when they are hungry, tools when they are coming back.
Shed next.
Cruz stacks wood tight, bark inward, ends flush, a neat face a mason would admire.
Today there is a lean on the west side, three splits shifted a half inch like a shoulder someone bumped and did not apologize to.
I run a hand along the stack and feel a thread line behind the third row that was not there yesterday.
Someone measured the inside of our shed with their eyes and decided what could be disassembled.
I tuck the idea into my pocket with the shape of the missing sockets.
The orchard sits low where the fog likes to hold.
The trees keep their own counsel, black branches sketched against a gray field.
I take it slow.
The ground here hides its story until you are standing on the verb.
Halfway through the first row I see it, not a print, an absence.
Snow flattened and then fresh powder tossed over it by a hand that needed the gesture to feel invisible.
Men forget about wind.
