Steel Guns

To witness people’s quiet oddities
will always bring me back to early days
when nothing mattered but if I could play
with neighbor children. Only sharpened blades
of fresh cut grass could pierce the bubble made
around our games, though watchful parents tried
to temper manic plans. Now, any word
of judgment or of doubt can bring a plan
to end and I, for one, don’t care to test
my skills of dodging rival bullets now
that guns have turned to steel and blood is real
and friends who lose don’t fake the wounds they feel.