The school year was still new and the dusty warmth of a late summer Wyoming morning was thick in the classroom. I stood at the front near the blackboard with Mrs. Larson's hand firmly on my shoulder, glad that the flush of just ended playground chasings was still red on my face. 

She explained to the class that I had done the unthinkable, as she held up a cigar-box-like container that each of us had received just weeks before to hold our crayons, pencils and, at the time, our unsmudged pink erasers.  

"Tommy has run his pencil back and forth along the joint of his box lid until he severed it. Now look, it is ugly and will not be able to do its job," she declared with finality. 

Back at my desk, I rubbed from my mind the fact that another child’s treachery had ruined my box. It was not shame that lingered, but a deep loss of love. How could I ever regain my teacher's trust and scribble out, with every color from my desecrated box, the disappointment she surely felt? 

my lost garnet heart

somewhere in the manure—

desperate fingers.