who gets his kicks by killing.

Don’t you get tired of being a willing conduit

for their sickness?”

“I do, but I swore I’d use my gift to help others

and if this is the price, then so be it.

I have no choice anyway.

When I tried to stop, remember,

you called me back?

You needed my expertise to catch

that guy who liked to slice, dice

and can his victims.

Remember how we found the pantry,

the smell?

Who could stand still for that?”

Bob doesn’t answer,

just waves to the forensics people

to come do their stuff

now that I’ve profiled the perp

and am ready for further study

in my own way,

which is to say

by tracing him backward from today,

then forward into the gray afternoon

descending on us now,

when he climbs the steps of the cathedral

stands inside the nave

for the time it takes to say

one hundred Hail Mary’s,

then simply walks away.

THE PSYCHIC DETECTIVE: DESTINY

A nightlight in the shape of a bear

burns in the center of my darkness.

It’s clear acrylic and inside, a blue bulb

casts a pale blue light in the room,

where I lie awake,

my twelve-year-old insomnia,

a warning of future sleepless nights.

In the rest of the house,

the lights are out.

My mother is asleep

in her room across the hall

and in the twin bed next to mine,

my little sister also sleeps,

although occasionally she says a few words

I can’t quite catch.

They’re like snatches of a song

you can’t forget,

you can’t remember either, yet . . .

They haunt me now,

as I kneel in the cathedral,

where I was baptised

and where the memorial for my sister

was conducted.

I say memorial because she was—

her body was never found.

But to achieve a sense of closure

(those were my mother’s words)

the family, friends and concerned citizens

were herded into church

to listen to the priest say a few words.

He looked like a bird of prey.

I mean the way he hovered over the pulpit,

his crooked beak of a nose

and furrowed brow so vulture-like,

as he used his words as if somehow

they could conjure a body out of sound

and place it in front of us.

He said she was there in spirit,

so I thought she hadn’t gone to purgatory afterall.

She wasn’t bad enough to go to Hell,

well, I didn’t think so.

I didn’t know. I did know someone

had entered our room.

I’d heard stealthy footsteps,

the pause outside our door before he entered

and shut my eyes, barely breathing,

hoping the flutter of my eyelids

wouldn’t give me away.

I wasn’t afraid.

I’d been waiting all night.

I knew I’d be all right,

oh, I’d seen that too.

Don’t ask how I knew. I just did.

I like the term second sight,

because it emphasizes that you “see,”

but with another kind of vision.