Uncle

My uncle chose the day
I was supposed to go to the circus
to go crazy,
a cold February morning
when then windows of his house
grew so offensive
the television cried out
in a strong voice
for him to take axe in hand
and remove them
and then himself.

I can still see him being led away,
hands cuffed behind his back,
stern-faced cops flanking him,
red blood screaming against his blue shirt,
hot tears streaming down my mother's flaming cheeks
as her sobs echoed in her bedroom.

He’d visit sporadically years later,
early Saturday mornings
when I was still in bed.
I’d feign sleep,
huddled beneath a shield of blankets,
but the acrid stink of his cigarettes still found me,
his basso rasp scratched through the walls
as my mother’s thin laughter crept in warily behind it.
I avoided him at family gatherings,
avoided him until the day of his funeral.
I hardly recognized the man in the coffin,
my guilty heart unwilling to accept
that mad fear had robbed me
of the chance to know him.

Even now, the face of a clown
can reduce me to tears.

© Elle Lassiter, 2004