Every Time I Drive through Laurel

I turn to the eight-year-old

who is always with me,

as we make the big curve

I point and say

 

“There is the hospital

where they killed your grandpa.”

He looks silently and remembers:

 

The hospital bed

The funny smells

The old truck

bouncing over red dirt hills of a road

Greens store, before the killing fire

the cows, the barn.

 

Him and my daddy

talking about land

bouncing on his big round belly

and him laughing so hard

 

The tears of loss and rage

and my daddy saying,

“they killed him, you know.”