The Barber of Seville

My sister was murdered,
by a man named Smith,
but the police had forgotten her name.

"I'll nail that sumbitch,
I'll nail him good,"
I said,
and my road took me to Seville.

High school year books and librarians
can't help me.
They only spin tales
of the past,
but a call from a brother and a word from a mother,
and once again I am sniffing the trail.

Smith, you see, once made a box.
It held the remains of his wife,
but not of my sister, of another young
blister on the palm of this man's life.

He killed her and chopped her
and laid her to rest
in this hard, cold splintery grave.

A divorce she had asked, but it was his will
to kill her and hide her away,
and not till his brother came forward to speak,
his brother, the barber of Seville
did I have a good lead
to find where my sister might lay.

That barber, o barber who trimmed men's hairs
all the livelong. He'd visited AA meetings
for twelve long years but this secret still
ate him alive.

He knew the box, both inside and out,
he'd seen her face and her rainbow hair
and the rolls of clothes folded 'neath her.
And he went to the cops,
finally,
after all these long years and told them
of grandpa's old barn.

Someday, I hope to forget Seville,
that little old town in Ohio,
but until then, I will wait in my skin
and mourn my dear lost lonely sister.