Even in death my father
kept hold of me,
never let go;
the night my friend died,
swallowed the bullet that spread
the insides of his young head
all over his bed,
so red,
like the morning of a girl's
first period,
he told me how he shot his toe
long ago.

My best friend
so quickly dead at thirteen,
one shot
in whose wake the neighborhood
undulates;
my mother helping the others who
congregate like Quaker women,
scrapes his brains
into a crimson bucket;

All this
just to hear a childhood story,
just to lie
in my father's arms,
see the tiny scar on his toe.

Even the moon sways,
lays a shroud
on the furious flash of sirens
flailing their beet-red arms
against our drapes
like frightened bird wings,
rhythmic as this rocking.

At nine years old,
the little boy next door's suicide
seems almost a lie,
another myth conspired by adults
like Santa, God.
No St. Nick left that rifle,
a gift from his father
who needed a son to hunt with,
shoot wrens,
not play with younger girls
like a sissy;
but it was always we three:
Larry, Linda, and me
playing tea party.

He hung the pungency of maleness
above our coddled, girlish lives,
a raven amidst doves;
he taught important things
like how to climb trees
read Jabberwocky,
shoot BBs.

Never again did I
feel such love
from my father
as that night,
as he beat at the blood-
screaming lights
like at a garret bat
loose in the house.

But life rushed to fold
back in on itself
like tight petals;
with the help of the moon
it could pretend
there was still a flower within.
And my father could comfortably
refuse to discard that red bucket,
make my mother still use it
to scrub floors.