4.27

I pointed to where the couch had been.
It was green and god awful and probably,
I told them, where you had tried to sleep that night.
I showed them where the entertainment center stood -
I saw some melted CDs on the ground,
probably Journey or The Eagles.
I didn't look, I didn't want to.
How could your CDs survive?
I showed them to the room where I was asleep;
we called it The Cold Room.
Remember? We had an Oscar fish
when i was 7 or 8, and it froze to death
in there - poor thing, it's tomb same as his home.

They told me to distinguish where i had seen you last.
The front door, i said, Near the front door,
walking out to the porch that, now,
was in pain under the sunlight -
charred and stripped of dignity.

I cried, standing in a tank top the color of a bruise and
fireman boots up to my thighs, pointing out our simple life.
I tried with fervor to explain the paralyzing noise
of a couch,
of a house,
of a life burning down all around me.
and how, that night, the air was sweet on my black face
and the concrete was lonely and cold on bare feet.
Everything. I told them everything.

And they pointed out where,
plucked apart by midnight flames,
they found your body.