Free All of Us by Raymond Carver

arrest.
    He bailed her out when he got out of Detox.
    They drove home in ruins.
    This is not the worst. Their daughter had picked that night
    to run away from home. She left a note:
    “You’re both crazy. Give me a break, PLEASE.
    Don’t come after me.”
    That’s still not the worst. They went on
    thinking they were the people they said they were.
    Answering to those names.
    Making love to the people with those names.
    Nights without beginning that had no end.
    Talking about a past as if it’d really happened.
    Telling themselves that this time next year,
    this time next year
    things were going to be different.
To My Daughter
    Everything I see will outlive me.
    — ANNA AKHMATOVA
    It’s too late now to put a curse on you—wish you
    plain, say, as Yeats did his daughter. And when
    we met her in Sligo, selling her paintings, it’d worked —
    she
was
the plainest, oldest woman in Ireland.
    But she was safe.
    For the longest time, his reasoning
    escaped me. Anyway, it’s too late for you,
    as I said. You’re grownup now, and lovely.
    You’re a beautiful drunk, daughter.
    But you’re a drunk. I can’t say you’re breaking
    my heart. I don’t have a heart when it comes
    to this booze thing. Sad, yes, Christ alone knows.
    Your old man, the one they call Shiloh, is back
    in town, and the drink has started to flow again.
    You’ve been drunk for three days, you tell me,
    when you know goddamn well drinking is like poison
    to our family. Didn’t your mother and I set you
    example enough? Two people
    who loved each other knocking each other around,
    knocking back the love we felt, glass by empty glass,
    curses and blows and betrayals?
    You must be crazy! Wasn’t all that enough for you?
    You want to die? Maybe that’s it. Maybe
    I think I know you, and I don’t.
    I’m not kidding, kiddo. Who are you kidding?
    Daughter, you can’t drink.
    The last few times I saw you, you were out of it.
    A cast on your collarbone, or else
    a splint on your finger, dark glasses to hide
    your beautiful bruised eyes. A lip
    that a man should kiss instead of split.
    Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ!
    You’ve got to take hold now.
    Do you hear me? Wake up! You’ve got to knock it off
    and get straight. Clean up your act. I’m asking you.
    Okay, telling you. Sure, our family was made
    to squander, not collect. But turn this around now.
    You simply must—that’s all!
    Daughter, you can’t drink.
    It will kill you. Like it did your mother, and me.
    Like it did.
Anathema
    The entire household suffered.
    My wife, myself, the two children, and the dog
    whose puppies were born dead.
    Our affairs, such as they were, withered.
    My wife was dropped by her lover,
    the one-armed teacher of music who was
    her only contact with the outside world
    and the things of the mind.
    My own girlfriend said she couldn’t stand it
    anymore, and went back to her husband.
    The water was shut off.
    All that summer the house baked.
    The peach trees were blasted.
    Our little flower bed lay trampled.
    The brakes went out on the car, and the battery
    failed. The neighbors quit speaking
    to us and closed their doors in our faces.
    Checks flew back at us from merchants —
    and then mail stopped being delivered
    altogether. Only the sheriff got through
    from time to time—with one or the other
    of our children in the back seat,
    pleading to be taken anywhere but here.
    And then mice entered the house in droves.
    Followed by a bull snake. My wife
    found it sunning itself in the living room
    next to the dead TV. How she dealt with it
    is another matter. Chopped its head off
    right there on the floor.
    And then chopped it in two when it continued
    to writhe. We saw we couldn’t hold out
    any longer. We were beaten.
    We wanted to get down on our knees
    and say forgive us our sins, forgive us
    our lives. But it was too late.
    Too late. No one around would listen.
    We had to watch as the house was pulled down,
    the ground plowed up, and then
    we were dispersed in four