Death in Parentheses | The Poetry Foundation

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Share He came home with his right leg made a bit shorter but they didn’t notice. A landmine did it, he said to himself, and I was the only one who heard him because I followed him everywhere like a son. He hobbled when no one was looking, and I hobbled behind him. When he plucked an iris, I plucked the one next to it, and we thought of purple evening clouds. When he killed a butterfly, he’d take off the wings first, then crush it with his fingers and smell it. I tried to catch one, but it flitted away. He wanted to build a huge power plant to keep us from disappearing. I nodded and pointed out

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