• The rainstorm had swollen the backyard
    with a humid bite, staining the weeds and grasses.
    I pushed my fingers against the web of condensation
    painted across the sun room's incorrectly put in windows.
    There was a notable absence of thunder,
    making me question the judgment of August.
    Whether it was still a fierce month
    instead of just a transition to fall.
    Walking over to the back door I opened it,
    the drum of the falling water magnified
    while I reached out childishly to catch it.
    In my bare feet I stepped out on the wooden
    steps, which allowed visitors to see
    the garden or lack there of, populated with dandelions.
    My eyes scanned the ground as I noticed a bullfrog
    laying still beside me in the wilderness caused by lack of mowing.
    As I reached out, it made an attempt to escape.
    Naturally I chased after it until I got
    a decent grip on its soaked body.
    Studying it for a few minutes it became aware to me that it was young
    or at least not fully grown from the frogs I had seen.
    The weak attempts to escape started to irritate me vastly,
    so I started to squeeze the animal, tighter than necessary.
    The breathing became much more labored, struggling to inhale
    and exhale with its tiny little throat.
    Taking my index finger and thumb I grabbed its backleg ,
    feeling a bit like a chicken leg gnawed down to the bare end.
    I locked my fingers in place, starting to pull in the opposite direction
    the frog was trying to go in.
    A overcast above us started to fully break, the sun became the
    dominant presence, silencing the rain and illuminating everything.
    In that moment I tugged hard as I dislocated the bone attached to the socket.
    Squirming profusely I finally dropped the frog on the ground like the night does to the day.
    It made its way through the dense witchgrass all around,
    gathering little space between me and my feet.
    I casually walked over, with my barefoot I pressed down on its skeleton,
    pushing the organs and other bones to their limits of comfort.
    Quickly, I used all the fat in my body with my own skeleton to force
    the life out of the frog as it lacked the ability to beg.
    Once it was motionless, I kicked it aside and walked
    back in the house, my feet cleaned from the discarded
    rain still clinging to the grass.
    My mother asked where I been, I said nowhere
    harmlessly.