My Uncle’s Killer

wipes spots of toothpaste from the bathroom mirror

he shares nightly with his son. There, he’s humanized

again in my imagination, which keeps endowing him

with other forms: a lion with a bullet in its teeth;

a scythe-shaped smile on a child’s back. Can I tell you

that, sometimes, I utter the word justice and mean revenge?

On my best nights, I mean mercy, but my best

is my rarest form. The figure of my uncle’s blood

on the pavement, lit faintly by a gas station sign,

never changes. It’s always, in my imagination, that same

dark isthmus connecting his body to the storm drain.

It floods in this town every year. In the last flood,

several coffins escaped their grave to the horror

of almost everyone. I, though, am glad to see the past intrude

as spectacle, an image that refuses our forgetfulness,

as captivation. Freedom, after all,

is what binds me to the worst version of myself.

Shout  freedom. You can’t help it. You’ve made a threat.