One chemical afternoon in mid-autumn,
A little boy in overalls and boots played in the leaves;
Too young to realize the danger outside of the white picket fence,
Too old not to be curious about his protective parents.

The little boy in overalls, now a teenager, raked the leaves,
Knowing for sure what was behind the chipping gates;
Too old now to be innocent about the real world.
How afraid he was exactly, he never told.

Positive that he wanted to fix the world outside of the boundaries,
The grown-up boy stood beneath the old oak, whose leaves he’d raked, for the last time
How afraid he was at that moment, he nearly told,
Right before he was killed during his return to his mother.

The boy’s mother lays beneath the same tree now, sifting through the unraked leaves,
Face stained with tears like the splotches of mud on the white picket fence.
Right before he left, he made a promise about returning.
Which he nearly got to keep.