He came in winter, buzzing by the stove.
She fed him crumbs and butter. She was very
lonely. She liked his talk of summer,
grew perceptive as a fly. But in June,
when she still saw nothing, she squeezed her fist
and heard him scream. “I am the universal
suffering man, a sacrifice in
an empty room, reduced to a shadow
on a public wall, tearing my way
to the top in the bathhouse.” She called him
Gabriel. The night she was born bombs blitzed seeds
in her brain, a wild garden that flowered
in summers of violence.
By David Selzer