That Summer he let the grass grow up to the sky after she left him. Mr. Robbins, that is.

She left because they were conflicted over her grown children. They wanted to run their Mom, and he thought they were too old to be doing that. So she left, because with her, the children came first even if they were grown.

He still mowed the grass around the house but barely. The perimeter of his property looked like, how I imagined a prairie of long ago would look. We lived just a block away from him and I had to walk past his yard to get home. We were so close to the country the authorities didn't raise a fuss over the grass being that tall.

But it chilled me to the bone thinking about what was in that grass. It looked primitive..He had always grown sunflowers in that area and some had re-seeded themselves. Big blackbirds rested on the enormous stems and carelessly ate to their hearts content. While warily eying everyone who walked past.

I would see him almost everyday sitting in his lawn chair looking at that grass. It was weird. He would sit right next to the lawn mower like he was getting ready to mow . But then he would just sit and stare at the grass instead.

You could see that he missed her. Just in the way he walked and dressed.

Then one day I saw him smile for the first time since she had left. He was sitting in his lawn chair watching the grass. I saw it too..It was a fox carrying her babies one at a time to a new home. After that I wasn't afraid of the grass anymore. The monsters that had lurked there all disappeared.

~Nita~

Tonight's song, Stupid Boy by Keith Urban
1st video, 1st clip