Adeline Deacon

There's two childern dead in that house, one of em' drowned in the bathtub: body broken by a fallen rafter and the other just ash and bone after the fire swallered him up. Felt it coming on fer some time, felt my mind straying, losing track of this world and wondering where I was most of the time. It was like being in some sort of dream where you're wandering around this place that looks kindly familiar and you recognize people as someone you think you know and that confusion was terror and loss of love. I saw myself sitting on the porch of my daughter's house in a wheelchair shitting myself, mumbling crazy and having to be fed. My grandson looked so much like my daddy, ever time I looked at him I felt daddy's hands on my body in the night. I had to catch myself, cause I kept wanting to talk to him like a little girl talks to a man who she fears and would like to see dead and loves with a violent love all at oncet. My daughter brought him and my other grandson over one day so I could watch them for her while she went to work. He was taking a bath and he called to me to come in and help him warsh. When I got in there he said something to me that daddy used to say and I grabbed him by his hair and held him under the water. He struggled for a while and then went limp. I went downstairs and locked the younger one in a closet and set fire to the old family home. Laid down on my back in the prairie grass and watched the flames climb into the darkening overcast sky. God, there's so much in this world worth forgetting.

Hearts So Strange and Wild

Rise gently
Shedding your murdered body
The ache of tenderness
in your still heart
The throbbing a rope that murderers cling to
and use to climb from the lake of fire
that hides in our slumbering selves

Gather them so close
that you can hear eternal life intoning softly
in the most mysterious of their organs
Hearts so strange and wild
struggle to express their terrifying love
As they unfold to receive love
they become both pollinated and pollinator
Spreading their dark seeds
in remote places