Red Danielson, Wisteria

A scar droops like wisteria over my hand where your pit bull ripped 

down beneath the good flesh before I killed it in the bare lawn by 

the motorless fridge & your four-year-old’s once beautiful face like a 

whole bouquet of wisteria, where the dog would not let go though she screamed, 

screamed like a light seen suddenly in a storm, where no light should rightly 

be, screamed even after I pulled the dog from her; screamed with the 

shattering clarity of a crushed throat, seemed to scream the word itself: 

wisteria, wisteria, but all the same, you broke the bottle over my head, Eudell, 

& touching the lifeless shoulder of your dog, sobbed then: my sweet, my 

sweet, & the festivities expired, but still, something happened: it was 

silence that draped over every onlooker as your little girl screamed those 

petaled horrors, everyone watching with nothing to say, because what 

do you say at the sight of such beauty as wisteria, wisteria: the vine of

shattered glass only wanting to fall from the thing that holds it so.