The summer day the spike went into my
brother’s head, as such things happened
in the twentieth century when the Freudian
death drive was often accessed out of
boredom, I learned from my doctor parents
that scalps bleed profusely. Twenty years later,
when Theodore and Cosima jumped on little
Robert’s bed and Theodore fell off and his
white-blond head turned red, I said, ‘Scalps bleed
profusely’ and Rachel, his mum, thanked me
for my composure. Robert’s mum, Emily,
who had wanted to be a jazz singer or actress
and who always introduced me as a poetess,
said she knew a couple who had a second child
because their friends’ child died in a freak accident.
But back to the summer day the spike
grazed my brother’s scalp: I slept beside him
in his racing car bed and my father woke me
and slapped my face, thinking, I assume, of sex,
whereas I was already thinking about death.