WHEN YOU TOLD ME YOUR FATHER WAS DYING

I didn’t tell you my suicides

were visiting me in dreams:

the grandfather who took a gun

to the desert, the aunt who moved

all the furniture into the bushes.

People I’d come from, ran from,

pushed back. Others invented

in sadness: bullet holes in the tops

of their skulls, heads hollowed

out like pumpkins. When they opened

their mouths, moonlight shone through

making their smiles tiny flashlights on a hillside,

a search party emerging, calling my name.