After the Fire

(Started just over two years ago and then put away until a few weeks ago, I finished this today.
For my witnesses.)

You are that guy now
the one who at Christmas when we came home
late from a family dinner in the valley
had no time to switch on all the Christmas lights--
the ones you insisted on to add festive colour
to the ones already strung along
the eaves that we kept up and lit year-round
You had no time for the ones looped around the Christmas tree
that other pageantry you insisted on when I suggested we forego a few of those frills that year
 
 
Without all the light
the opened gifts beneath the tree loomed
like little spectres of themselves
blocks of darkness throwing slightly darker blocks of darkness
beyond their edges
the ephemera evidence
of the most fugitive kind
that there had been another life
one more placid than this one taking hold
as you were becoming that guy
mute
opaque
rogue
 
 
You had in your pocket your new key
the one you’d been carrying
planned and concealed
(for a while I realized later)
a potent piece of arsenal you released that night in the dark
 
 
That key I couldn’t see and everything it opened
made you powerful across from me in that corner
and then again when your back
faced me at the door
 
 
In the dark no words
would explain, not yours
absent anyway
and no one else’s
later
 
 
In the morning under the flat low winter sky
when the available light is so little at that time of year
I took down all the decorations
packing away what had been mine for years
throwing away those new things
you’d insisted on 
I put the bare tree in the lane
premature seasonal refuse
there was no public infrastructure yet to handle
 
 
Later your best man told me you were of sound mind
and I didn’t think to reply at the time
that he better hope no one of such sound mind
would some day do this same thing to his daughter
 
 
You might say now you didn’t intend on annihilation
claiming because you didn’t mean to do something
means that you didn’t
 
 
You had some war to wage
something you had to kill
something out of sight
you couldn’t see
or wouldn’t
and you set the dogs upon me
killing your foe
taking back what you believed you were owed
 
 
I thought about that other war far away
out there
the one they talked about as shock
and awe            
I thought about how I hadn’t understood
then
what that meant
shock    awe
until the killing comes home
where it works too
 
 
The wound was so obscene
I closed my eyes to it
only to find its darkness fully alive
inside still
boring deep
 
 
Don’t let this define you, C said to me at lunch
as she ate her flatbread while I drank four gins
And I knew I wouldn’t
eventually
(and I was right)
 
 
Though as everything is
I’m reshaped
and my trajectory too
 
 
You may be something else now as well
but time has a way of stopping as it collides in a dark night
with a brutal muteness in a room you fill with the unseen and leave
 
 
So whatever it is that might have changed over there after that dark corner
hasn’t really
it’s still there with you
that dark corner
where there’s nothing left
 

And as I cast this last glance back from the sunshine place
I’ve delivered myself
in all the bright light here
with my back facing you
all that remains
is the door I closed behind you
(and then changed the lock)
way back there

​
so far away from here.


​