No one Could Explain

“Stop! You’re hurting me.”

It was the last thing he said

before the hunting knife with serrated edge

sliced horizontally through his ribs.

Deliberately, three times in succession.

There were no defensive wounds.

The body was found face down

in a small leaf filled ravine.

A scant twenty feet from a trail.

In the wooded section of a small town park

criss-crossed with running paths, biking trails where

students routinely walked the woods to school.

Late autumn, a thick carpet of decaying leaves.

They were the same height, similar weight.

One, a mean-spirited middle school bully,

the other, an incipient sociopath.

No one knew, could have guessed the outcome,

not even the doomed players knew….

Was it nurture or nature?

Environment or genetics?

The centuries old debate.

The lawyers argued both sides.

No one really understood.

A mean-spirited bully, a sociopath.

One dead, one incarcerated.

And everyone surprised, baffled really,

because the sun still shone in a cloudless sky.

Master’s Art Quilts, Volume 1