The End of Innocence

And maybe it goes something like this.

The saint on the dresser,
her doe eyes beckoning.
The green of the walls gone too pale.

A sound like thunder
in the kitchen.
The crash of pots and pans.

This thing inside you, squirming
to be let out. The way it tastes
like rain. A suggestion of blue.

Your mother's rhinestone brooch
wrapped in browning lace and hidden
in the drawer. Bones in the corsets
flattening your spine,

children laughing in the yard
and suddenly you’re crying
into the dark of your hands.
The blood in your underwear
and a shoe gone missing.

Voices static in the television.
A row of girls in gingham dresses,
the whites of their eyes
forming endless strands of pearls.

Whispering, Mary. Mary.
We always remembered.