In the story I keep trying to tell, there’s a woman
handcuffed in the driveway.
She’s thrashing against the officers, cursing, spitting

on them, her breath rising in the cold air until it
disappears, and they shut the Charger’s back seat door.
All seven of us kids

are watching from her bedroom window overlooking
the garage, our faces
shocked with police light.

When my brother and I were smaller, we found
a bird in the backyard that had pecked itself
raw, almost featherless, and continued

digging into its own quivering flesh.
We rushed inside to tell our mother,
her hands still dripping with sink water

when she swept us into her arms and said
to stay away from the diseased thing,
there was nothing we could do.