Waking in silence and, through tilted blinds,
the mark of red bougainvillea—pink light tossed
         at a white door. Out of sleep, I turn

A man in a mask and wearing a fat tank on his back is bent to the door of the
          parking garage.
He is spraying and wiping, wiping and spraying. Another man with no mask
          and no hair shuffle-dances around him,
gives a wave, crosses the street, tries to open the door to the hotel, which is
          locked and closed, darkened for good:

Out of the darkness, men come 
     with knives. They work quickly, 
muttering back and forth. 

It was white I wanted —of snow, clouds, of sky overcast, of
       a star if you take the shine from it. Usual
           sound, light, and I wake—but sense a shift

Like orange candywrappers, writes
the daughter now, describing the time
years ago when the goldfish

She was older, sleek, and had a bite to her, but I was bolder with my knees on either side of her.

Ava taught me how to smoke
in the woods behind our high-school dorm.

Through the night Grace lives by fire.
She sings to it, she reads it poetry,
she knits and rocks and nods and…

Always the unbearable—the sting of her demands,
the threats, the way she kept me from my friends—

I’ve gone up-rivers to get rid of them
where I dispatch fish. The family
will say this is a lie