I was not allowed to be angry, so I bottled and drank
my rage with wine chilled by too many ice cubes--
I suppose that’s why I shiver at inappropriate times.

My parents said: You have to be the better person.
Even as you ***** those girls, called my sister a liar,
mocked my mother and father as they drove to town,

attempted to arrest me for “demeaning of character.”
But I lost my temper, once, I felt it hot like nausea
creeping all the way to my fingertips before I

screamed and shouted and shattered two glass bulbs
hard against the tallest pine tree in our backyard.
I cut my ******* picking up all the chips,

incidentally making me rethink my plan to punch you.
Instead, I imagined myself holding my father’s pistol,
the one he showed me how to shoot from 100ft,

complete with target acquisition training--just in case
you tried running--we both know you never
took me seriously enough for that. I bought a faceless

target shaped like a man, picturing your acne-skinned
cheeks warped with that smirk you wore when I tried
telling you to *******. All this before my anger faded,

fog rising from too-hot blacktop pavement when the air
cooled, snowflakes falling as I stuck my tongue out,
swallowing each crystal like a word I could have said.

Thin music played as we danced uneven
circles around tempermental light flickering,
a bonfire built lopsided in the metal bowl--

you handed me a glow-stick then broke yours,
shaking the torn end so the liquid spattered
your hair, head, shoulders, and the grass,

dew-wet around your mud-stained sneakers.
You reflected the constellations overhead--
mirrored as they were in your backyard pond

when we went night-swimming with silver
fish ******* on our toes. We spent the night
discussing first impressions and each other--

you admitted I was your kind of person
even though I thought you were weird,
too short a boy with too high a voice.

I soon learned you were a hurricane tied down,
and you convinced me I had not once been less
than spilled starlight--that’s why my skin

glowed beneath fluorescent lighting, untouched
by the sun’s aggression burning freckles,
cosmic dust dappling my nose and cheeks.

You said: “It’s always been the way of man,
born as living mirrors for nature to see itself.”

All I can remember is that time in Wal-Mart
when your older sister came to me and asked:
“Is it true that Payton went to the ****** bin?”

I wonder where she heard that lie and how many
more were threaded among Honesdale locals,
weaved into their perceptions of my family--

their shoulders betrayed them when they turned
away as if we were the diseased ones rotting
inside-out--maybe we were, in a way--but at least

swallowing all this salt healed our wounds
faster than your actions would fade from memory.
I punched you the day I found out even as you

scoffed, laughed, you hadn’t ever taken me seriously.
At 17, I had learned not many people would--but
my revenge came after I moved three hours south,

when your father died of cancer, your best friend
crashed your mother’s car, your sister fled
all the way to England to escape the mistakes

eating at her shadow, and I got out of our hellish
town. You became rooted among manure, ***-
holes too deep to outgrow--I’m sure you’re choking

on worms by now. And when I finally reach
the lofty sky, I’ll hold the sun between green hands.
I’ll hide its light and warmth from you.

It’s not over until all the crows
fall from holes opening in the clouds--
sunlight washing cracked concrete white.

I refuse to let your actions fade to static until
the last ca-caw echoes on parkways silent
as the attempted protests of the girls you *****.

I could count five of them by the time I left, yet
none seemed able to open their stitched lips
despite my rallies and strong-worded speeches.

Maybe that’s because you laughed at them, too,
when they threatened to file police reports.
But five years have past since then,

and the rage freezing me from the inside out
has begun to fade, slowly, thawed under
a sun growing steadily more yellow--warm,

my friends always said it would be
if only I would just give it a chance--
all the crows are falling.

I constructed my sister’s portrait in three parts:
her eyes painted full color, bright with oil,
nose in colored pencil, a few shades more sallow,
and her mouth lightly smeared No. 2 pencil,

because I wasn’t sure how to form the words
for a police report never filed against you.
And sometimes I pass you on my way to town,
you still driving that ugly, blue pickup
with that same old sneer on your pig-like face--

I want to scream out my window the way I did
when I dreamed you came to me years in the future,
asking how I’ve been, some lame excuse to bury
your immorality with rice-paper niceties. I remember
my throat tore and bled as if I’d swallowed broken
metal wire as I repeated over and again:
Do you know what you did?
Do you know what you caused?

I constructed my sister’s portrait with three bits of paper
ripped apart and glued crudely together again.

I only prayed to the moon after it rose beyond
my window, the white sill a frame for waning
crescents and gibbouses--milk-drowned gods
dripping stars as they climbed skeleton branches--
some nights resting behind flood-heavy clouds.
People say the moon has a face, but
I have yet to see it sneer at my sins even as it tastes
my ocean-drop tears, evaporated into sky-bound veils,
brushed along the shadowed craters ...

The moon itself bemoaned imperfections in midnight
wind creaking branch against branch until I woke
slow from sleep--sad light staining my walls
pallid, pale as my own skin, glowing in muted
television shows left running while I dreamt
the moon spilled a star between my ribs--
dim luminescence radiating warm,
and the star, seeping through my pores, thawed
the ice I had prayed to melt in the first place.

I remember the old back road I used to drive--
the one that connected my house to yours
with the abrupt boom of green mountainside, fog
clinging in patches above the evergreen

awning, and the old pine reaching far higher
than the rest--a monument to the trees
growing steady in your eyes. I haven’t
forgotten how your irises, only saplings,

drowned in the flood of ‘06 as the Delaware
crawled over the bank and into your head.
I never knew what to make of your
ripple-warped, water-stained fears crashing

rampant as the broken **** that swallowed
Church Street. They reminded me of tangled thorns,
my fingers scarred from moonlit attempts to smooth
needle-edged guilt as you repeated to me:

I’m so sorry, it’s all my fault, I should have known.
You told me how you knew I would, too, wash away--
that’s just what people did after floods.