Witnesses

  Rushed to my green jeep parked like a box thin black ties    their love of Jesus Jehovah’s witnesses come to knock on my carved white door  Their pamphlet says I can protect myself from demons by wearing a suit of armour from God There is picture of the man  Agboola   who no longer fears the dead  When the Indian prayer unrolled  I hung it on the wall   I’m pretty sure everyone was asleep Sometimes I think my neighbour’s ear is pressed to the wall listening for a tear    I’m looking for the invisible ones but the sun is closer than I thought   My co-worker wants to know why my blinds are closed   He helped me find this house and always walks by on his way to the ocean    everything dark in the child’s story    the old person inside    or the scarred At the grocery store there used to be a man who would tell you the day you were born and shake your hand—he recognized me Do my guardians take naps when things are slow    do they appreciate the cable TV    the three of them raising their eyebrows at each other when I look in the dictionary for something to help me say what I mean There must be more words than these     I try to remember the sky was blue before today    I remember biking to a wharf a body of water    passed an apartment building where I’ll do coke in about ten years with my boss and some strangers who go broke the next day and ask me to pitch in for the drugs which weren’t that great anyway   The biking   I didn’t know it would be to here When I was upset    my friend gave me a pixie stick and told me to empty it into my mouth    It helped    My body is always calling the police  ambulance    After I buy groceries   smile at people in the aisle   the cashier   bag boy   I want to drop my bags in the parking lot When the boy died in the movie   I knew it was real  a real boy had died and now someone stood in for him    and a family stood in for his family    An Irish girl sang    Some people don’t know they’re hurt  walk around with blood on their faces    looking for a hammer I’ll tell you what happened    the staggering tuition Once he sat with me every night and listened when I couldn’t talk to anyone else when I would open my mouth to talk and cry without stopping    I still remember when he kissed my forehead   he’s dead   but he kisses me before he gets out of the car   I liked our talking best across the table   the way I could say what I meant to him and he would tell the same story    about the woods    and the river and his friend who caught a fish with his bare hands   The friend and the fish in a bright flash in the river    He had straight red hair Ray was the one who told me    It was a bright flash.