Revenant I dreamt you died again, this time in a fire. You left a note for Mother that didn't burn, saying how you wanted us brought up. She wouldn't show it to me, or tell what it said. -- But I was there in the blazing house, we were all there together, although the others slept through it. Why didn't you save yourself? Why couldn't I save you? You died horribly, like all those people in runway plane crashes, seared in death, struggling for air, piled in heaps at the exits. Again, Mother tried to build a new life -- she bought a Japanese car, permed her hair. Then she went into hiding. I wandered from barber to barber until my hair was cut short as when I was twelve and picked up the manicure scissors in the bathroom and scalloped myself -- I had to -- then hung a towel over the mirror. -- Gail Mazur