1.

When Ed pulled up in his rust-colored trailer,

I ran out to meet him. He was the nice old man

who cut the grass. I loved him and sat

on his lap until one late summer afternoon,

I saw the serpent pressed to the thigh,

leering past the edge of his shorts.

I can still see the impassive

planes of his face and smell the smell

of cut grass cut with sweat.

Nothing much happened except

I learned something else I didn't want to know

and backed away into the house.

I told my mother I didn’t like him, but

she didn’t listen, and he kept coming back.

For years, I hid under a window upstairs

as he circled the house on his chopper.

He’s dead now. He took his own life. 

I don't know how I heard

that in his suicide note he wrote

that he wished he had never

been born, but I understood why

he wished for oblivion. 

Whatever he did, I forgive him.

2.

On the playing field, Ed ripped up the grass and ate it.

In gym, he banged his fists against the painted bricks.

When he spoke to me, I listened

because he did not seem to want to be alive

and I could relate to his desire to die.

When he spoke to me, I listened until

one day he told me the name

of a girl he had forcibly defiled.

I regret. This is not

the only secret I have kept.

3.

I picked his name from a shortlist

of psychotherapists that worked

with my university insurance.

Ed was a kind, listening man

in a still little room, filled

with white noise. For two years,

I confided in him about Seckin, 

my father, Burkan. Of course,

this was before I met a storefront

gypsy, who showed me through mystic

and irrefutable proofs that everything

has meaning and happens for a reason.

Back then, I just thought

What’s in a name?

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