I know something you don’t.

How it feels to ease the rifles

from my father’s gun cabinet

 

into the camouflage duffel bag.

To sit at the table and ask

my sister about her shift, my heart

 

consumed with secret hammering.

I know what it is to be low,

the small one. To feel a vanishing

 

for those who say they love me

but do not imagine what I could do.

Schoolmates talk over me, my mother’s

 

eyes bore past my videogame’s

blood-drenched screen to her own

worries, but these are not reasons.

 

Reasons float beneath my deadpan

voice, speed my dream of bodies

shuddering before me as I cross

 

to a place where evil is both engine

and afterthought, where motives,

like victims, might as well not exist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Mauro Monti