This morning I went wild with the ghost peppers.
Snipping ten red fruit off a plant in the yard, I held
them palm to sky as an offering. Evil is a seed that
waits in silence. A fire that licks at the dry page.
At thirteen, you gave me words, a crumbling notebook
held together with tape, a pen, a rock, a box of
photographs. Like a swarm of bees carousing with
the gods, a whole new ecological zone. You’re
a lit match. I am gasoline. So that we might spill
into one another a confession of infidelity. Two
people. Two versions of every story. Forest Lawn.
Glendale. I remember the sky when we buried you,
apocalyptic red. Where is that gun you jammed down
my throat? Not a gun, a book spread open on a living
room table. Shots so graphic they obliterate childhood.
I’m a worm, tiny cells / sealed mouth isolated by geography.
The City of Angels has a millipede named in its honor,
Blind, translucent, 489 legs crawling under the streets.
This isn’t the ending I’d hoped for. I wanted the dead to
rise out of their graves, reveal the land’s dark secrets.