What I found in the cave,
(he said, lying in the grass on the hillside, breathing hard, the taste of vomit sour in his mouth, his arms and legs sore from the pumping run down the hillside)
What I found in the cave,
(he said, and she held his hand nervously, her fingers not sure of how hard to squeeze, whether to caress)
What I found in the cave,
(he said, and was glad that she hadn’t come with him, hadn’t been there for what he’d seen and heard)
What I found in the cave was the body of my first girlfriend. Her skeleton, polished to a gleam and laid out carefully on the floor. Her red hair in a long plait, brushed out and brittle, circled over her small skull like a halo.
He’d laid her out before my mother, and placed her fingernails at the exact tips of her fingerbones. The floor was dirty and littered with rags and trash. It was dark and it stank of shit, there were piles of shit here and there.
The places where my brothers had slept had been torn apart. My brother Bradley, his nook was caved in. I moved some of the rocks, but I didn’t find him under there.