Perhaps it is ignorant of me
to believe it was a man

but when I tell you
on Sunday night
I saw the body hanging and knew instantly, I mean

the body told me what it was

I would have been home
fifteen minutes sooner but my hands

could not help but turn to detour
back around the block

to look at the tree so close to the road
so unmistakable

There were no more police or lights
or ambulance

No more dogs sitting
tethered

The body already a ghost

I drive by often
on my way to the grocery store

The tree so slim I question how it even had the will
to hold a body

A month later
two wilted balloons dangle tenderly from the branch
Pink and green flashes in the rain

So tired from the celebration of a life
Helium slipping between spaces in the latex

Such infinitesimally small atoms able to push past what is
designed to hold them

Perhaps it is ignorant of me
to try to create a metaphor

from any of this

I think about the body
and what it saw just before

Cars passing on the street

The picnic table just feet away
Where I saw teenagers smoking

the next night

I sifted through police dispatch calls
too late

Only to find the last twenty-four hours
and a password-protected archive

There’s plenty more to see here: traffic stops, weapon possession,
trespassing, something called

suspicious circumstance

Every dispatched address altered with small Xs
in place of street numbers

I try not to think about what they kicked out
from underneath themselves

to free the body
to let air slip from all the spaces

Danielle Susi

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