Disfigurement
It was in summer when he tried
to stop the voices and the erratic movements
only he could see out of the corners of his eyes.
My brother heard distant tree branches cracking
and he spiraled down into the snare
of schizophrenia, into a black tumult of waves
with their salted immensity, then aimed a gun
with a shaking hand and shot a bullet into his brain.
Teal sky hovered above the front yard’s magnolia tree
as it dropped innumerable white petals,
like intimate cicatrix emerging through an evening mist,
too many to count. Winter came suddenly
with sandpaper ocean drizzle, evoking
aging boardwalks, icicles clinging beneath them.
Our mother waited and riffled through old photos
of him as a boy sliding down snow
embankments with the Atlantic spitting out tufts
of seaspray behind him. She waited, half-hoping
he would never wake from the coma,
and this hoping only a mother is allowed.
But he did come back to life,
the bullet carved out from his brain, leaving jagged scars.
There would be a long semblance of healing,
a semblance because the unanswered would remain
hard like hidden nails or shrapnel with accusatory points:
Who is to blame? Who is to blame?
