Melinda Smith #16 Failed Attempt 1

they died because words they had spoken

returned always homeless to them

- Janet Frame, ‘The Suicides’

Failed Attempt 1

Never the right words to say why. His parents sit with him,
active listening, like the psych told them. They grimace
when he speaks, as if their faces had opened for a moment
then snapped shut, on something too sharp to be spoken.

Months later he returned to the tree. He had thought the police
would leave the rope there (for always, as a sacred thing, as a warning), but it was gone. Perhaps
it is in a drawer down at the station, he thinks, perhaps a homeless man took it, for a belt.
He wants to touch it again, aches for it with a child’s passion for a loved bear.
There are no words, there will never be words, to explain this to them.

(c) Melinda Smith 2016

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