=Incident Report=

My father turns from the closet

with a rifle in his hands.

On the bed my mothers sits

a school book on her lap.

She waits for me to finish spelling

the word

half-hanging from my open mouth.

I have told this story

many times.

It is all that is left of me.

So I am trying to get it right.

The window behind my father

is always half-lifted to the night.

It is summer. My mother says,

“Do something.”

My father, stepping forward, says

“What is he going to do, Anna?”

Little details are always coming back

like fish picking pieces of colored gravel

from the bottom of the quiet aquarium

and spitting them out again

having mistaken stone for food.

The gun, by chance, is momentarily level

with my heart.

This is how we die, I realize,

just as randomly, as suddenly,

as irrationally as this,

without preamble or meaning;

I discovered surrealism

that evening.

I feel myself leave my body

and float passed my father through the window

the way you do in a dream

to keep yourself from seeing yourself dead.

I did the impossible.

My father sees the vacancy

in my pale face

and decides right then to file for divorce.

He knows he’s been misunderstood;

he’ll never again sleep easy in this house.

Now, I terrify him,

a faceless voodoo doll

all stuck with pins

with his name sewn inside

in place of a heart.

The bullet wasn’t meant for me.

But it took me decades

to understand this

too late.

My mother will forget the entire incident.

Or claim to.

My brother doesn’t factor in.

As for me,

I never returned.

But I look in at the window

from time to time.

What was the word

I never finished spelling?
Who is that girl
sitting in my place?