Years After the Funeral

There is a consensus.

Marsha was a schizophrenic. And everything fell

just into place. The nights of one hand

fighting the other. Said she knew Lucifer

and how he slept in the fingertips of her left hand.

That’s why she needed the knife.

And the day they finally got color

TV in ’63. And Marsha wailed

pushing the knobs all the way back

down to black and white again.

Said the color was so loud. Knew

that if she didn’t, the crimson

house fire on the nightly news would

envelop the living room. Swallow

the paisley love-seat in one gulp.

We mistook it for aging, like the evening

we sat, table for seven, at Julio’s

and she told us the blue corn chips

tasted purple on her tongue. My mother

says Marsha died of stubbornness.

Refused to wear her oxygen tubes to bed

adamant that this was how he was poisoning her

again. And now, today, I am always seven years old

playing with the dusty toy carousel at Marsha’s

estate sale. Thinking about the horses and how they spend their whole lives

moving up and down, but never

leave this place.