PAULA FINN

The man from Srebrenica tells

what they did to his son

in the room with the cement floor.

 

If he could, he’d replace his eyes,

he says, with the eyes of a person

who did not have to see this,

 

or the eyes of a mystic,

who can see through it.

What would it take

 

to see through a fist,

clutching a knife

between a boy’s legs?

 

I picture myself tucked in that night.

The thing must have been too big,

the skin around it, veined like the petal of a tulip.

 

A door broke open and

another shut at the back of my eyes.

After a quarter century, that door ajar.

 

I go with the man from Srebrenica

back to that room, the windows

knocked out, the young men gone,

 

stained floors marking the day

and the shrill song of the cicadas

ringing between the walls.