I swallowed a bullet when I was twenty-one,
it came in a shot glass and didn’t make a sound,
it came in a shot glass and nine years later severed my spine,
the numbness took me by surprise, threw me against,
a wall, laughed as I slouched down, fetal position,
an inviting hand around my throat, singing death song,
eyes sewn shut so I could relieve the trauma inherited,
passed through DNA, paint thinner sheathing every bud,
handful of hazy memories through years, my grandmother
crying over her son’s casket, brown fist against brown oak,
not once but twice a mother said goodbye for a while,
last son left breaks down a door, on the other side
a mother who couldn’t stand the loneliness and left
to fry her kids bread one more time, then a daughter,
my mother, homeless until I was born, until a nurse
with shaky hands gave her a chance at dry land,
her child both key and reminder, a door wide open,
another closed with a slam and the man that hit her, drank
whiskey from plastic bottles with her, told her she was the love
of his life by leaving bruises on her arms, burying himself in a mound
of snow, tossing himself headfirst down a flight of basement stairs
one day, the crack of his neck, beautiful aria, every note purposefully
off key. Fatherless child, husbandless mother, silent transition
into three years sobriety, raising only child, this only mother,
this only chance at getting it right. When twenty years later
a doctor said cancer, said lymph nodes, said remove the colon,
said we have to close a door, a bullet was swallowed,
it came in a shot glass and yellowed her skin,
it came in a shot glass and colonized
her Ojibwe body, it came in a shot glass
and didn’t make a sound.