By Caitlin Cacciatore
I wanted to write you into a love poem,
But all I can conjure
Is a picture of a girl crying off her mascara
On a stoop in the south of Chicago,
Smeared burgundy lips wrapped around
One
Thin cigarette,
And the man she used to love
Entering the scene upon his exit
From the doorway with its crumbling yellow paint,
Pale, now, in the rising moonlight,
Faded from
Two
Decades of wind and rain,
And the gun he’s hiding behind his back –
“Come in,” he says to her –
Voice shaking in the cold December night,
And she says
Three
Words in return,
Breath rising like a halo around her lips,
But it’s lost to the wicked wind,
And he raises his hand and puts
Four
Slim, flattening bullets
Into her, and the
Five
Children they had together
Come running
Just as the church bells ring,
Announcing the arrival of the hour
Six.
