Beirut

is where I grew up
until the age of ten.

My mother died when I was ten,
when Demeter was eight.
It was a car accident; it hit a truck.
Both my mother and my younger brother Jim were killed.
My father badly injured his left leg.
Wystan and I were at home, watching a
black and white movie, Stardust,
and eating celery and carrot sticks,
waiting for dinner when the phone rang.

It was a very strange funeral.
My father flew in, late, from a talk.
We waited for him, waited until we saw his black car in the distance.
And then the priest coughed and began.

I remember after the funeral.
Wystan came up to me and
said,"I think they were fighting. I think he--caused it somehow."
It haunted me for years, this lack of innocence,
this inability to look my father in the eyes at that moment.
It did not seem to affect Wystan at all
but I wanted badly to believe in accidents.
All my life was changed at that moment.

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