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The Nature of Boys at Dawn

Tommy Dean

After the sawing of the trees, after the cry of wood, after the smell of pine on the dander of skin on the skein of breath, after the flattening of the ground, we buried you in the well, the water dried up for years. We shout down to your corpse and wait for you to call back. Your soul tangled in the weeds of the dusty bottom, we wonder who will join you next, while the lumbering continues, men losing eyes and limbs, a war against our nature. The fires mirrored in our eyes. The screams we save for you.

Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press, 2022). He lives in Indiana, where he currently is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, and 2023, Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2022, Monkeybicycle, and elsewhere.  Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.

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