and maybe I blamed you just a little for believing
some benevolent power would protect the castle

I re-live the story in my mind as if I'd witnessed it myself
how our neighbor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the gentle widower,

was shot on his stairs one night after helping us escape across town
how my father, blood of my blood, a disabled veteran,

trained as a sniper during the war, lay in wait, his rage
made righteous by another man interfering with his family

I imagine him waiting in the attic, Bible in his lap, a box of ammo at
      his side
and as that good man, whose name I forget, mounted the stairs

to his house that night, a single step in a split second saved him
from the fatal shot intended for his head

when blood of my blood pulled the trigger and the bullet flew
from the muzzle of the 30-30, wounding him in the shoulder

and I imagine him leaning heavily, weak with shock,
against his weeping 7-year-old daughter

baptizing her with his blood and I felt both guilty
and thankful at the same time because it was his blood, mother,

and the terror in that little girl's eyes made you realize
“across town” would never be far enough

so you took my sister and I and fled to the end of the earth
to someplace he'd never follow, to a whole new world

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