No one was smiling in this photograph
she kept on the nightstand by her bed.
It was of the family she lost
to the hands of her brother, Ned.

The photo had been taken years earlier,
the day he was committed, in fact.
He swore his vengance on them
and, with the devil, made a pact.

He slipped into the shadows,
becoming one with the night;
reappearing three days later,
he was ready to fight!

No one was spared,
not even the dog or cat.
But she wasn’t home at the time
when he came in, swinging his bat.

She had to identify the bodies, no less:
her mother, her father; even her brother Ned.
"Hope you rot in hell," to him, was all that she said.

And as she left the morgue that night,
a photo of a dead man she had in a locket
she now kept at the bottom of her jacket pocket