Blood smeared the walls
Splashed the tile
And saturated the clothes
Of the dead man
With his throat slit
Like a gleaming second mouth.
The sharp coppery smell
Of his blood
Filled my head
And I tried to breathe
Through my hanky.
Last week a dead man
Slumped over the wheel of his Buick
Parked in his garage.
A small crimson hole
Appeared in his right temple
But the exit wound on his left
Was the size of a plum.
Death is a rude visitor
Appearing at his pleasure.
There is no preparation possible
When his shadow darkens
A door sill.
I remember teenagers
Suspended from garage rafters
Bodies burst along railroad tracks
Each piece no larger than a basketball.
I was the first there
To comfort a screaming woman
Whose husband sat
Impaled on the shaft of an old Chevy’s
Steering column.
I tried fruitlessly to comfort
A father
Whose wife poisoned
Their four children
When a man in a Hawaiian shirt
Screamed in the parlor’s large room
That he wanted to see the children’s bodies.
My hand was on the father’s shoulder
As he melted into the carpet.
I’ve knocked on doors at midnight
To tell families
A husband, a wife
A child
Mother or father
Was never coming home.
Then, I awoke one morning
Knowing
It was over.
I could do no more.
I dry cleaned my uniform
And hung it in my closet
Still in its plastic shroud.
But I close my eyes to sleep
And count bodies
The way others count sheep.
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