We are searching for evidence,
following behind after the cops have
asked all their questions,
made all their notations,
taken all their photographs,
clinical and cold;
after the medical staff has
loaded up a body
like a side of beef draped in white;
after someone has tried to clean the place,
to hide the evidence,
or sanitize death,
or protect us from it.
All that remains are details:
a remnant of shattered glass in the carpet,
passed over by the vacuum;
the bullet holes, little pockets of nothingness
which refuse to be wiped away like liquid.
And energy.
The energy that leaked out of the body
is floating in the air.
They couldn't suck it up in their vacuums, and
it wouldn't leave through the doors which
were left open to air the room
as though death were a stench that would dissipate.
We finger the bullet holes like Thomas,
one in the frame of the door
and the other burrowed into the ground
under a frayed tunnel of carpet.
We kick the tiny shards of glass
which glitter like stars,
but it is the energy we feel that makes it real.
The rest is left to our imaginations.
In our minds, we see it all.
Blood running, gun in hand,
away from the scene of the crime;
the echoes of combustion like doors slammed,
and a man, or a body,
or something in between,
gaping at his perforated self,
his heart being blown out like a hollowed egg,
a bloody, broken yolk spooling down around him,
and energy escaping through the holes
as though it had been pressurized and was now released.
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