ABSTRACT
As an adult, I know now, of course, what “that” was all about. The remembrance of my thoughts as a child, as recorded in the poems, is of alarm, fear, and chaos. At the time of the episode, I was a preschooler or thereabouts, and I didn’t even know the meaning of words such as sex, incest, homicide, and suicide. The adults were acting funny. The funeral of the adolescent was solemn and sweet, but the grief of those in the church was shaped in what I knew as shame and guilt. It was that feeling that I had when I had accidently broken a Sunday dinner plate, but worse – much worse. The silence in our small community was knifelike, and the pain and fear of living within the mystery, at least for me, was extreme.
