I  grew  old and  died.  But before  that I stole a car.  A green ’57 Chevy.  It was  summer  and mangoes dangled from Miramar trees.  Copperheads basked along the canal where I fished for  brim  with a  cane  pole.  Keys  left in the  ignition, one  of us  kicked  the  window  out.  A whooping gang all rode away.  Three of them huffed  glue from paper bags.  Night picnic for thieves.  We drove quick shadows into a weathered billboard for Lucky Strikes snapping the front axle.  The Chevy ticked and smoked like a creature heaving its last breath under bright wisps of the Milky Way.  We gave the night burning tires, a savage perfume, and ran when a car came down. I ran into a barbed wire fence, dangled there  bleeding from a gash. It didn’t hurt a bit with fear.  The four of us  walked into town  one-in-the-morning laughing until  two cops with coffee at the corner store looked like they might start with the questions. That kid Moon-Face Joe sat in the back of the patrol car. His window down said Evening, Gentlemen, but we  just kept walking,  heads to the street and three of us high.  I wasn’t stoned but I had blood. I was 12.

Lenny DelaRocca is founding editor and publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal and curator/editor of Chameleon Chimera, An Anthology of Florida Poets (2024, Purple Ink Press).