Abduction
There is a way none of this happens.
Pine trees hang dark and shaggy as dusk.
They do not move—much. Too dark with time
they know the way to none of this.
The streets of Somerville hang in the gut of
the country, not by unseeing a bloodless abduction,
but the memory of a shuffling young woman
acquiescing to the buzz-brained brute squad,
their heads somehow not exploding with
the racket of dopamine angels trying to get out
There. There is a way to unbreak
the heart at threaded fear.
None of this. None of it
ends a country forever for all time—
not even these flowers placed by her picture
by the side of the hollow, hollow road.