Читать книгу Intrusive Beauty - Joseph J. Capista - Страница 16

Exit Wound

John, 1975–1995

Your knees that afternoon were caked with dust

and other matter—life’s particulate

remains unstuck from his apartment floor.

We spent three hours searching for the place.

And when your finger found the dimple just

beneath the sill (it ricocheted) I watched

your face, all day a tangled knot of pain,

grow slack. The face I saw was his, or his

age nine at Gettysburg beside the storm-

felled tree from which he yanked a musket ball.

He bit the slug like on TV and broke

his tooth. He cried. He was a boy. We knelt

a moment, touched the bullet, touched what now

tears headlong through our lives. He was a boy.