Naming Ceremony
- Our father, who spends most of his days painting
- pictures, says coming home to our mother
- stroking out was like walking in on an affair.
- Bending, he demonstrates how
- an aneurism hugged her
- to her knees. A man always
- at his easel, our father tries to draw clarity
- from obfuscation. Every retelling:
- bluer, then redder. His memory
- a primary color saturating
- the ears of whomever he can will
- to listen. Over and over, our father draws a loss
- so big it is itself an inception, a story
- he knows better than the day
- his daughters were born.
- His heart is strong.
- He has the receipts:
- a scar between his breasts
- that I've cleaned like a smudge on a window.
- Over and over, our father draws me
- a picture of the crescent moon
- fishooking her hospital room.
- He loses the story for the pleasure
- of finding it.
- We lived in this
- maze for years. I can tell you
- our best days weren't glad.
- He's a history
- whittled down to this
- single story. In my version,
- when her mind blew,
- boys were playing Beirut,
- crushing cans of Pabst
- against their shoulders. I flicked
- white balls into red solo cups.
- The night turning
- like the wheels of a faraway gurney.
- In their basements, I was an animal,
- a pale light. Not yet
- knowing how loss finds its way to you.
- Or that sometimes when you think you are playing
- someone else is dead.
- These are the ways in which we come
- to name things.
The Widower
- Five winters in a row, our father knuckles
- the trunk of his backyard pine
- like he's testing a watermelon.
- He scolds smooth patches
- where bark won't grow,
- breaks branches
- to find them hollow.
- He inhales deeply
- and the pine tree has lost
- even its scent. He grieves
- in trees—our father, the backyard
- forest king, the humble
- king. The dragging his scepter
- through the darkness king.
- The wind splits him into shivers.
- Rivers of stars
- don him like a crown. Our king
- who won't lay his tenderness down
- trembles into the black
- unable to stop
- his kingdom from dying.
- I have failed to quiet
- the animal inside him.
- If only I would
- take his hand.
- This man weeping
- in the cold.
- How quickly I turn
- from him.
