I awake in my ripped red vinyl Lazy Boy recliner, thin upper lip busted wide, open breath smelling of day old blood, my body too pained to move, legs contorted under me as if I had no bones, my arm ringed with yellow, purple and blue bruises as if a constrictor had wound his way up and around my arm gripping it for dear life, looking out the red rusted window pane as raindrops the size of peanut M&Ms splash against the window like God is crying a deep cry from the bottom of his gut as the world spirals out of control – even his control – while across the sun kissed, sandy desert dirty men with sunken faces and matted black beards as long as father time shoot riffles at each other, and now at my brother, bullets piercing skin and slicing bodies wide open with jagged wounds, as blood red as bricks gushes into the blinding daylight, briefly pooling then sinking into the soft sand, drying black as night where men lie crumpled in heaps like rag dolls in a little girl’s toy box, and I think why me.