my son has no taste for paintball
My son sheds his year-round shorts and short-sleeved tee
for long pants and long sleeves,
what he’s been told to wear
to lessen the sting of inevitable impacts.
Hood up, he looks the stereotypical hoodlum,
even further from his usual self.
At the end of the party my teacher husband texts
we’re never hosting something like this.
I picture the boys covered in paint,
ask if his sneakers are ruined.
No, they’re fine
he writes
but it’s a bunch of kids
in full military tactical gear
shooting at each other.
too real
too raw
He comes home
all in one piece on the outside;
inside, rattled, by more than
the way the bullets grazed skulls,
more than the sinking feeling
of pulling a trigger for the very first time.
These boys already know too much real life –
all the losses that can’t be laughed at,
the way things get so serious so fast:
fire, flood, shooting, plague.
Good times are too hard to come by
to be squandered on
taking each other out.
