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If Walls Could Talk
...We are magnolia'd memories, we are the four,
and there are no words to salve what we saw.
Now paint-petals flake and snowdrift the floor
and spiderweb doilies soak up the soiling.
We saw two stony snow-souls, their cold empty eyes.
We saw the .38 Smith & Wesson and whatever god
they thought they knew staring down the barrel of it.
We saw the silver comet of an axe blade flash through air.
We saw the bloody hand print on the door. We saw the rag doll body
writhe on the floor and s**t fear. We are the four,
it is said we have ears, and what we have heard we can never un-hear.
We heard the old woman woolly in curlers and nightie
and Nembutal-numb shout out and the brassy blonde b***h
shout back that the tape recorder had dropped and broken her bone,
though really its reels unspooled cries of an innocent one
corner-cowering, terror-tears budding in cornflower eyes.
We saw the edges and angles. Wall-to-wall carpets of blood.
No one remained, though remains were found, and the house hollered
hollowing into hell, and we were the ones left standing, the four
witnesses to dust drifting and sifting like snow to the floor.
Screams still echo in empty rooms and nothing will ever erase what we saw.
Copyright ©
Charlotte Puddifoot
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