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Show seeking, laughable really, past the bottom, the coral, the reef, the sandy floor, past the scalding water searing Bryan's, no George's, no Bryan's newborn skin, the nurse already gone, fire licking at his ankles, his thighs, the tiny curve of his bottom, past the marlin, long dead, sides beaten to a pulp, eye shattered like the ice on a pond just before it gives way, past the broken records, broken heads, broken treaties, broken promises-the one to keep you safe, the one till death do you part, the one not to eat that brownie, that pie, that peanut butter sandwich-until I heard the screams, and then I stopped. I was in a hole, a cave really, though my eyes were closed, so I could only imagine this place, hear the place, hear the crying, the suffering, a language all its own, my father, ten years old, as he slaughters his pet pig, the wail inside his small body as he drowns the cats, fights the bullies, holds a man's severed hand in his own, the scream of my mother, her son cold and wet against her body, no breath, no movement, her sky-shattering cries that cause the crows to bolt from the limbs, he is dead, the pleas of my aunt as her father rapes her, splits her body open like a pomegranate, the cries of my aunt as her father-in-law rapes her, the moans of my cousins as their grandpa forces himself into their tiny bodies, and, too, the cries of my grandpa, twelve, sold by his own mother, sold for a few dollars into slavery, on a train that will take him into the earth where he will forget how to see, and other cries, those I don't recognize at all, but insistent, cries without stories, or stories I haven't heard, stories not my own, an entire chorus of suffering, melding into one, and then, quieter, but still there, still there, amid all that pain, alfthat torment, the cries of a baby, left in a bucket, broken and blue, I am not dead, she wails,/ am not dead. I am not dead. I am not dead. And that is it. What I had never realized before, never considered, would not have 256 |