By C.T. Salazar

It is 1995 and a gunshot has big-

banged inside the courtroom where my mother

 

is working. I am three, and two rooms over

where everything is set to sudden motion—

 

carousel of over-turned chairs and falling books.

Panic, like the city of Gubbio where citizens

 

for months were trapped behind their gates

because of a man-eating wolf. His jury of teeth

 

lawless and gleaming like the stainless steel

of the revolver smuggled into the courthouse.

 

In my three-year-old heart fear made room

for itself for the first time. The hammer falling

 

like a gavel. The bullet traveled from the audience

to the wall behind the witness stand, but

 

not before scything through the chest of a man

pleading guilty. The courtroom gone feral:

 

the full moon of the mind where screams blend

to a single howl. A woman ran from the audience

 

to the empty-chested man still in the chair.

Head back and mouth open—face still wet

 

with the tears of confession. How she took him

into her arms the way Saint Francis accepted

 

the wolf of Gubbio into his. How she cried

the same words of the saint—O my brother of god why?