no one is bad all of the time

Even the repeat pedophile
had his moments.
No one can say he wasn’t
good with his hands.
His thick, crooked fingers
could quickly lay mortar and bricks
in inhumanly perfect,
straight lines, without a level
or a guide-string stretched taught.
Delicate natural rock placing
and intricate fireplace facings
were his specialty.
Sometimes he stared dead
into empty space,
trying quickly to calculate
the exact number of bricks
it would take to fill in every last inch.
It was a talent to be sure,
this innate sense of special relations;
a talent I was too young
to notice or appreciate
before the space he began measuring up
with the full round of his fish-dead eyes
was the empty space inside of me.
But even now, after the fact,
I’ve often been reminded
that it’s important to remember,
that no one is bad all of the time.