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