Like the fireman who died around the corner from my apartment in Harlem as if walking into fire isn’t reason enough to die but we have methods for survival and when they do not work we worry we dissect we must decide what went wrong the street is closed a camp setup firemen and policemen there round the clock and TV crews too and the mayor once everyone needs answers and now they are tearing down the building for it is not safe which makes the street look like a mouth with a busted tooth and my neighbors all stop to look to snap pictures to say I was here I was alive on a spot where someone died which is nearly everywhere in this city in this country in this world today I read about the Golden State Killer finally identified after forty years 72 years old now a man who thought he’d gotten away with raping 50 women and killing 12 people a man who caused a wave of terror through Sacramento in the late ‘70s a man who used to go to townhall meetings about his own attacks how one man stood up said he didn’t understand how men were letting their wives get raped in front them this man was angry looking for someone to blame why not the victims so the Golden State Killer went to that man’s house next raped his wife in front of him to prove a point how fucked up is that and do answers ever really satisfy I think of my younger sister who spent her childhood with bloody hands: wash, wash, wash feared nearly everything like getting AIDS feared the punishment for not doing X was something deadly a car crash cancer these things rub on to you I remember them in fragments like how she checked the keys each night in the front closet by the door how her little fingers jingled them how I waited for that sound so I could fall asleep too and I wonder if I would have ever touched those keys had she forgotten but she never did did she and nothing truly terrible ever happened what started such behavior? every therapist I go to wants to know wants to know why she was never put in therapy herself the answer is death our grandmother’s death tragic but she was an old woman but it was sudden: Valentine’s Day I saw her on Valentine’s Day I was nine my younger sister 7 candy hearts with little words printed on them: LOVE ME MARRY ME KISS ME heart heart attack wood paneling of older sister’s bedroom parents in doorway faces not right she’s dead grandma is dead sometimes you don’t recover from the most expected of tragedies sometimes you turn everything into a game because life feels so random. because life is so random. if I don’t do X something horrible will happen I see a kid on TV say Valentine’s Day will never be the same after his school was shot up on that day in the latest American massacre because death changes things and now I’m remembering a girl on the train last week like something out of a movie a painted face bright red lipstick with mascara rivers down each cheek as she stood in front of a boy who had done something or maybe nothing was it the fall out of a tragedy or the fear of one about to come I don’t know I longed to be able to hear what they were saying from the other side of the car but the train kept screeching and the people all around kept talking and talking and talking and I wished everyone would just shut up and listen

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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