When his face became hostile his mouth
tightened against his teeth.
As whose wouldn’t if his parents tried to poison him,
had him spied on, then lied to him?
He didn’t even believe we were his parents—
that was a fiction we maintained,
for vague powers who paid us to trick him.
Are you willing to go for genetic testing? he asked.
Yes, I said. But he didn’t want that once he knew
I’d do it. It always triumphed,
that terrible perversity of his crazed mind.
If Aaron were alive now, I think,
alive and himself, as he was before he lost his mind,
he’d make planning his sister’s wedding easier.
He’d keep her from freaking out
every time there was a hitch.
He had that gift of lightness, of balance,
the confidence that things would work out
that comes with great ability.
He’d join the circle dances at the wedding,
tall and straight, with his broad shoulders.
It was like having a grand piano,
beautifully tuned, then finding it destroyed one day,
though it looked almost the same. Finding
that someone had installed a mechanism
that made it crank out the same mad tunes
over and again on its distorted scales.
Until it was gone. Then you’d concentrate
on how it had been when it was whole.
Ingrid Hughes
