***

I was there, in a house,

or rather, he was in ours. 
You might think a three-year-old 
can’t remember in the same way 
an adult can. Which came first: 
the stranger’s two legs at the top of 
the stairs, or mine, running up 
as if to greet him before Mother drops 
the grocery bag and pulls me back 
outside, refusing to return my feet 
to the ground. I had no say in the matter, 
the way a caged garden only has a voice 
once the light moves in. 
The way my father had no choice 
but to chase the man and the different forms 
of fear for nine blocks, the passing 
minutes hitting mother in the face 
like cold hose water. Then, I can’t remember 
the color of my shoes, or his, can’t recall 
the tar-paved road we took before or after, 
unraveling to get there, from there to here, all that 
free water light flooding out from 
our opened door and into the street 
where the police stood like a bad opera 
imprisoned in mid-song. 
They said, he had a knife and a history. 
Then, it was dark, long past 
an imagined afternoon of washed plums 
floating on the cutting board 
wood. Each wood stair––a cutting board, 
and my feet, singing skyward without me. 
I do remember this now, if that counts 
for something. Upon hearing the hammered-down  
end of the day, Father looked at me.
He announced, It’s bedtime for children.
And I look at the clock like it was another 
mistake I’d made.