As a child, I did not know how my grandfather died.  

I grip knowledge in part and prophesy in part —
life appears in pieces, a massive Venn diagram.
             Birth in Massachusetts inscribed my first circle.            
                        Swan boats in Public Garden,
                        ancestry an anchor preventing my longed-for drift,
                        Priscilla Mullins’ house still stands.
                                     Then New York City, Puerto Rico, Buffalo, Gulfport in the mid ‘60s                                      sketched interlocking circles – indivisible.              

What did I learn and where?
                        Knowledge exceeds books, chalk-decked blackboards or classrooms                         though their circles appear on my page.   I learned the hard way,
                        a victim of an unconventional brain.

The genetic circle sketched inside the circle of my birth evaded sight, until                                     I woke with a friend’s husband, his face against mine,                                                                      the spasms of his body a violation.  
                                   
The switch in my genes flipped to “on.”
Everything changed. Everything.  

My grandfather died by his own bullet.                              

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