Debbi Brody

They Told Us They Had Cleared the Scene

The angel
holds the key.
I follow you in.
My left foot
behind my right
stops at the door jamb
and spots the burnt backside
of a screaming spoon.
Every painting is covered
in taped notes or in magazine pages hung
with messages about mothers, children, safety.

You, so beautiful,
dressed in a halo
of shock.
I find coins scattered around the room,
parts of prescription pills,
new needles, pristine in cellophane coats
and pieces of used needle glued to the floor in blood.
Blood stretching deep through the mattress
into the box springs, pooling on the floor,
a Pollack painting of blood on the headrest.

The upper right corner of the bloody bed
resides firmly in a north east niche of my brain,
behind a fold at the outer edge of my eye.
It is exactly one degree quieter then the shot
echoing in the dispatcher’s ears.