He interrupted winter with his own.
Over chocolate cake & Jimmy Stewart
I got the news. Couldn’t stay
on the phone long, no room
left in me for the shaming
language: Stupid. Selfish. Waste.
Over time it became the accident—
too drunk to count all the pills
he’d taken. No need to discuss
the tragedies of lineage.
What was in the blood stayed.
His fanged veins, shot liver
& all that dark honey chalked up
to shit arithmetic.
Gilbert, sweetest uncle,
saddest vato on the block,
moved back in with his parents
the summer he wasn’t locked up.
His P.O warned it was the worst
place to stay clean.
I remember the night, loaded
on whiskey & H, he played guitar
while his mama
scorched the air in protest
howling in the wake of her son’s
audible grief, the inconvenient
drawl of requiem.
Each song pulled from him
like something stolen,
he sang until the starless night
caved in on itself. Throat
a wounded calf limping
across the floorboards.
Mama! mama! You never loved us,
did you? Mama, why didn’t you try?
he sang, in the greenest
voice ever invented.
She stood silent in the doorway
as he reached for her—
a child beckoned
by a cursed spindle
&
without offering the grace
of a single word
she turned her back to him,
strolled into the kitchen
& turned the radio on.