I was nine that winter,
the snow had yet to make the fields clean,
falling.
Through the wheat I saw
her leap and not catch herself
a tangle of limbs becoming carcass,
blood in the white between her legs,
white, like beneath a
girl’s petticoat,
my friends would laugh,
white like panties.
The hunters ran in their
orange,
their green splotched coats
long guns; explosion.
I can still see her fall,
panting to silence, her
tongue hanging out
as if to taste the snow before she left.