He brought her flowers, the man from the food pantry—
lobelia with tatty petals, bare-root with rags
for its mouth, a sex sealed over, beauty crammed
in. You did this: he says. The knives. Serrated
upper lip, boot-sucked. Flowers get sullied
in the clammy rim of a soda glass. Flowers get
hurried in our childhood ambush, the embedded
pinwheel trail of our brothers’ snickers and jabs
draw us like birds on an unstable branch. Done
for. Fathers in fedoras never returning. To see
how the lobelia would never open, would live
its days bleeding profusely, to find its tubes
tied, straining for mother-bits, straining
in shy head-bowing, sun straining through
her face like molten rubies. To watch this
when he told us not to; to watch him drive
her down on her knees while he stippled
her breasts, down-girl, girl down. He shrouded
her in lace, a vulgar veil. He told her
to lift her head, and told me to close
my eyes, but before I did, I saw her smile,
Mercury eyes wet, open and buttressed, her falter—
a kiss. And then there was the gone light,
the going eyesight, the rush of flies over sugar-chairs,
no taste as blade stalked skin, no taste on the arms
except for the arms, no taste of sweet this night
except the taste of lobelia, no taste from the man
except for the man, no sound from her windpipe
except when she died, I heard the woman gasp, her yes-yes.