Camera Roll

Waiting in a dark console
on an undeveloped roll of film
sit snapshots of a scene
I cannot yet stomach

I need the truth
captured in a flash
to make my blind eyes see
something I’m not prepared to face
just now

The three of us
the two boys I once called brothers
now men, surrounded
by new partners, new friends, new apartments.
Adam’s girlfriend took them after
or maybe while
I shoveled fistfuls of mushrooms
into my feasting mouth

A barnacle to a whale
I attached myself to this family
Grasping for something solid
after being thrown overboard

Sweating in the hot tub
they told me
how many people suctioned on
to their sea soaked wooden ship
no one thought
could wreck

When I visit their father
at their childhood home
he’s mowing the lawn
we used to play in

“I was just talking about you”
he tells me in a tone
that does not complement
the life he tried to maintain
from the front porch
where he watched
us play.

The front porch
where he watched his wife leave
and not come back.

He does not ask me where I came from.
He asks me,
”if I sent you a piece of mail,
would it get to you?”
”Do you have something to send me, Joe?”
”No.”

What will develop
from this dormant fault
beneath my feet,
ready at any moment
to shatter everything
with its quaking earth?