Of you, I have only
a small gold badge
from the factory where you worked.
And a handful of pale photographs,
in which your memory is caged
like an unknown animal.

No letters, though as a child
I wrote to you in bright colours.
I burned your replies
when I learned of the bruises,
my mother crying in a closet.
The borrowed television, smashed in
in a fit of God.

They tell me you were once wonderful,
with your angel-gold hair, blue eyes.
That you liked to swim,
played tabletennis.
That in the photo of my brother
it was you who put him on the motorbike,
put five dollars in his hand.

But for you, I have nothing.
No curiousity to disturb my sleeping,
or waking. No hunger for a why.
My hand is empty and I won't put it before you,
begging for a dollar,
asking for a ride.