I didn't get
your lick last
on my cheek
or hear you
bark for bye,
but the stare
glassy-eyed
and asking
for revenge
from a child.
I tried peeing
in the steel
bucket used
to fetch water
and then boil
your cut meat
they abused
with salt, but
I just couldn't
make a drip.
The walking
green camou
pants nearby
and the heavy
boots pacing
back and forth
to startle me,
I whimpered,
while the garlic
was burning.

Some weeks after they shot
my father in the face
and my mother in her stomach,
I could feel the joints
of my bones, the ***** popping
in the loose sockets,
all pain, like the ****** of nails,
their rusting in friction.
The same anorexia could be
seen on the scrawny
gait of our dog that had already
forgotten the taste
of fish heads my father grilled
on coconut charcoal,
my mother stewed in vinegar
or I deep-fried to crisp.
Gray, his foreign name, barked
before dashing out
towards the avocado tree not yet
in season, a collision
between a hardwood and a skull,
his body on the ground,
the dimming gaze a quiet begging,
his nod letting me live.

Sheet-metal thunder
rattles through bluest skies
and brightest sunshine

Like water running, strange requiem
things I can't recall, though deep in soul feel
these skies, these burning lives
we are wild in the fields
only a sun, a storm, the rain
passing by.