The letter waiting on the table under the wilting larkspur                     
says your mother owes the government $418.                     
The money is two years of survivor’s benefits                     
because your step-father died in a blast of lead
breaking into someone else’s house.                     
But you disappeared two months before that                   
(though your mother is sure you will come home)                     
and the law says your money can’t be shared                     
with thirteen brothers and sisters.                     

That same shotgun ended the fear in your house as well;                     
Saturday nights are quiet now, and your mother                     
sets wildflowers on the table on Sundays,                     
though the nights still come cold through windows                     
naked since the blankets were taken.                     
You were barely a dozen years older than the child                     
your step-father gave you in a closet                     
with red blossoming loudly behind your eyes. 
                     
Your mother pays her debts;                     
she will take another job, though even now                     
she is too worn at night to sing                     
to your baby, if she could—she burned                     
out her voice with a cup of Drano                     
trying to stop the pain after your step-father                     
signed his name once too often                     
in shattering strokes across her jaw.
                     
The lady from Noxubee County Welfare                     
thinks you went to Oklahoma and changed your name;                     
your aunt has a job there and only seven children.                     
But your little brother, on cold nights, remembers                     
the reeling smack of a whiskey bottle                     
and the gangly bundle wrapped in gray blankets                     
in the trunk of your step-father’s Ford,                     
and how the baby cried for days.