“He’s already in heaven,” she said,
“Sitting down to feast with Jesus.”
Back then, if I had been eight or ten
And she had been a peer instead
Of an adult, I might have said:
“You must have a hole in your head,”
Meaning: You must be crazy.
But I was twelve and though
I thought she was insane I was too
Polite and frightened to say as much.
And the hole was not a metaphor
But one a bullet had made that day
In my brother’s head. And I
Was the one who put it there.
I wonder if she was thinking
Of the painted window
In our dinky church: the one
Where Jesus sat at a picnic table
With bread and a jug of something?
Was it an image of the Wedding
At Cana? Or the Last Supper
Before any of the other guests
Had arrived?
He didn’t look
Lonely, He just sat with His arms
Spread and His empty hands open
As if He was patiently waiting
For someone to put something in them:
A plate of food? Some nails? A gun?
Who knows what He was up to,
What He thought or felt?
He was in His world
And I was in mine.
This is all I knew that was true:
I was alive; my brother was dead.
When I closed my eyes I saw him
Lying at my feet.
I knew
God and I were through,
And after that, what is there?
I imagined I was floating
Alone in a vast abyss
Like a little cloud,
But I wasn’t—I was falling
As fast as a material body can,
But the distance was infinite
And there was nothing near
By which to judge
What was happening, and so
It seemed I wasn’t moving at all.