I refuse to say I’m fine with it all,

when really I am barely all right.

Somehow, though, I know

that just because it is not okay

does not mean that it does not

will not exist

because the silence in the room is

overwhelming, yet when my mother

whispers to me an irrelevant piece of

information, I give her a look.

And the silence remains.

 

They sit the same, although the only

similarity between them is the reason

why they are here

(which is tangent to why I am here).

They don’t meet eyes with each other

because they don’t want to face

the world, to admit they made a mistake.

To admit that they’d made the same

mistake before and had they not

been caught, they’d’ve done it again.

 

I feel dread sinking into my stomach

because I know what comes next.

 

From the front, my grandfather comes

into the room and beings to speak.

He writes the number on the whiteboard.

In our county in the last decade: 157.

 

In the next few minutes the dead are

brought back to life.

The girl who was gone right

before Christmas, the one whose

gravestone says she

never got to say goodbye.

The boy whose grave is dappled with

change, a token from his friends

because alive he always had some

to spare. The baby, two years old

who was just starting to live,

and her mother. The husband now a widow,

 

bringing in the survivors. 551.

The teenage guy who went to

the same school I did, but

made a mistake. Let his friend drive

and four blocks from his house

lost control. A alcohol
muddled brain unable to stop

in time. Life preserved, but

never the same again

(to paraphrase the doctor).

 

I sign my name over and over

again, confirming that those in

the audience are here

and my grandfather begins talking

about my aunt. On an old television is

a VCR tape of a photo of a woman

who vaguely resembles the woman I had

dinner with last weekend.

A flicker then a drawing of a horse,

similar half-finished drawings in their

house and I smile in its beauty.

But last night I checked

 

the mailbox, and was unable to read

the letter she wrote, and had

to ask for a translation. Because

her handwriting was so skewed.

 

He plays a cassette of her speaking

and I don’t recognize the voice

until he plays one of her now

and I know that I am the only

one besides him who can

understand what she’s saying because

I grew up with her slow, slurred speech.

Easy smile never faltering, despite

the way it all turned out.

 

The only sound in the room is the

clock ticking

while the meeting

draws to a close and

as they file out of the room

a naive part of me

hoped they heard,

hoped they listened.