Men As Children In Prison, Dissolving

After hearing you tell how you murdered

three people in an afternoon

​

and hearing another tell two,

and hearing another tell one,

and another tell two,

and another tell,

and another

​

I’m telling you:

there are bits of me stuck in seeing all of you

in your prison blues

hunched

wrecked

head-in-hands

heart open

choking on your own disgust with yourselves

​

– how it was decades ago,

as children you came to killing

and how you’ll never not be those children dissolving

​

in the living —

in the haunting  —

as only a dozen of us sit in this room

but God,

there are so many lives haunted here.

​

The details don’t matter

in order to understand

that you as a child

were dissolving in your haunting

long before you spilled,

and you are dissolving still:

​

Grabbing at pieces of yourself

feathery and drifting

like children grab

at viscous bubbles

in awe, like deciduous

trees come alive

with new leaves —

blindingly

green.

Althea Seloover, 2020