CRIME Poem: True Crime, by Deborah Harada

So many times the body is found
because water tumbles over stairs,
along furtive hallways, across creaking
thresholds to slide headlong down the slope
of the driveway and onto the blacktop
street where it tidies itself into a message
people wade through wade through wade
through on their way to work church school
the market, hoping to ignore the insidious
damp soaking their sneakers, seeping into
their socks, squishing between their toes
beckoning them to follow the swirling
rush that started as a trickle, that started
as a slap of an argument, grew into rage
with hands teeth broken glass until
a stranger sister friend can’t help but
flex their feet in the sog of shoes, slosh
up the driveway, over the threshold,
undeterred by the small flood eddying
down the hall to shoulder past resistance
and pressure on the bathroom door and
discover her, still afloat in the spit and spill of
no more never again you made me do it
while her limp hands and hair rise
at water’s command and the spout runs
like a mouth without mercy filling her lungs,
bloating her cells until the spigot is switched off
and the water drains, leaving us crying
drowning really in the message
that we are always always too late.

Author: poetryfest

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