Joe Peacock

Shadows and Suns

 

She found her father, gun in hand,

his skull cratered by the shot,

pooled in deep red waters

that splattered with his bloody rage

the walls and everyone within that house.

 

We spoke of her recovery,

of how her older brother—

quiet and smiling

at our school a year ago—

had done the same,

but with a razor blade.

 

She wrote a theme called Sadness

in my class that month and said

she screamed and screamed.

 

The moving earth is talking

darkly in her eyes these days;

she’s handled by the ground beneath her feet,

pushed and turned and bullied about

as shadows and suns do what they must.