k

killing something wild

you said the deer hanging upside down in your grandpa’s
shed was a sign the boys had a good day and the winter
would be nice and we could all drink a beer together to 
celebrate even though we did not have to do any killing
and we were not old enough to drink and I said I was going 
to be sick and deer hanging upside down reminded me of hate 
crimes and you said these woods have no hate and you did not 
understand what I was saying sometimes and I have been in the 
woods before I have studied cracking branches under bodyweight 
and I have spied in every landscape but the woods with you wasn’t 
like my cousins’ woods or my dad running with a BB gun and me 
laughing because I knew he’d never kill anything and it wasn’t that 
I thought you wanted that deer to get killed but I had suspicion you 
did not care either way and that indifference made me more sick but I 
choked back my tears and vomit so your grandpa didn’t call me a wuss 
and so we could all clink beers and act happy that the deer was dead 
for the sake of


Photo by Mathias Reding on Unsplash

Lily Crowder

Lily Crowder is a twenty-three-year-old writer based in North Carolina. Lily attends the University of North Carolina Wilmington as a candidate in their creative writing MFA program. Lily's writing tends to focus on the human experience as an irreverent series of utter inconveniences. Lily has been published in Atlantis Magazine, encore Magazine, and Drunk Monkeys.