He saw me with cassette ribbons
laced around my fingers in the hay field.
Don’t ask what put me there
fifteen years ago. Ask the wolves on the border.
Ask the hunter why moonshine
raised his aim high to my heart.
My sweater—left behind. My parents pried
carrion beetles so forensics could steal
a swatch of blood. I’m also
the shoe, laceless in the corn field.
When I think of everything I’ve lost,
I rejoice—no soap to scrub the devil
from my tongue, no belt to bruise
my wrists over a broken dish.
My parents think the day they buried me,
they laid two ghosts to rest—
mine choked in a casket, the killer’s
to rot. To grieve is to
pound a knife along the mason
jar, already opened. Face it—
nobody wants to wake cruel.
There are always killings in the quiet
line of trees. Trust in this:
wings sprouted from my shoulder blades—
I glide on water.