The perimeter of the woods is bound in yellow tape. Inside, it is busy with flesh; they want to know. If there is a mark on every tree. Hand after hand over trunk after trunk, scouting out the scars. And they are astonished, the trespassers; they cannot believe their eyes: Six thousand trees. Eighteen thousand nails.

Your house lit up in the distance, blue, red, white. The church with its quieter light somewhere opposite. Empty. The woods full of silence and iron. Your face slowly drying. P.’s boots digging up the dirt beside you. Full night now. The first stars. Touching their cold holes into the sky.

At the gate of the garden a hand stops you. You let it. The same officer who brought you from the Moores’ to the station, eyes gleaming when he sees you. Erik on the garden step, flanked by two men. He is not allowed to touch you. A breeze through the lettuce, the long tubes of rhubarb, the bent heads of the sunflowers. You step inside the house.

Did you hear the truck this morning. Yes. Did you hear the saw. Yes. Did you hear a scream, a sound, what came after. Silence. Did you know he was coming. Yes. Were you worried about him coming. Yes. Why. Because I knew what he wanted. What did he want. To kill them. To kill who. The trees. And that bothered you? Yes. You spend a lot of time in the woods. Yes. So what did you do. Silence. Xie. What did you do.

You don’t look at the man gripping your elbow. The door to the attic in pieces on the carpet. Brass lock twisted, sparkling, between two planks of white wood. Such noise overhead. Stranger after stranger walking the stairs up into your room. You count the steps to the bed. Hear the whisper of the sheet pulled from bone. Your lamb. A shout. Don’t think. About the body in someone else’s arms, someone who does not love it, who does not know it can be loved. You look at your father. He looks only at you. Boots on the ladder. All the silver from the closet carried down in pieces. The cape. The skirt. The crown. Even you do not understand it. The body in a bag on the floor, the zipper closing its teeth so tight together. Remember. When you brought him here. The gold filling the room to the ceiling. They put you on your knees as they carry the body out. You sob and sob. It will go back to the church, behind thicker glass, a more solid lock, more beautiful because you have adored it. P. lays his cheek against the back of your skull. Shh. In the garden, in the woods, on the Moores’ farm, in your bed, you made as much life as you could. You looked for it everywhere, even in the body, even in bone, because this is how you see the world: as desperately, infinitely living. All you wanted was to help it. Go on. For a little while longer. Someone holds your wrists behind your back, pushes your head down so that you must look at the floor, which is wood, beneath which is dirt, and beneath that, stone: and farther still, beneath every road, every path, there is fire. It is a mistake to think of the soul as something dark: there is light spread over all the earth, isn’t there? You, at least, have seen it. You see it now. Pulled to your feet. Walking from one imperfect place to another. The trees, alive, behind you.