To my father
You see him, dead now, you said.
Her and her, dead, too. Your face
so unchanged in the year of rain.
It wasn’t the year I loved a man
with a head bald like yours, but after.
Summer, I worked in Puget Sound
and you were happy I was home.
The city told me best: Your grandfather is dead.
Since you have the same name, it’s safe
to assume part of you is dead, too.
The living room never settled so kindly.
On the walls, pictures of your new children
who later that year refused to buy your pills.
You cried on the phone to me. Sorry.
The year of crying. The year of cracking
into men and the men ridding themselves.
I have the same name, too. The year
of collective dying. What I thought was mine
belonged to you first. To think otherwise
was foolish of me. When your father died,
the crows sorrowed the sky and the field lost
its green heart. It was out the blue,
you showing me the old photo, digging it out
from a box beneath the TV. You look like him,
a man told me, meaning my grandfather,
meaning already faded, a sapped star.
He clothed me carefully like a tradition,
like a bitter chain passed down through generations.
Forgive me for the meaning I make of this.
You gave me a chain with your father’s gold ring.
It broke. I never told you. Forgive me
for being careless with your mourning.
Forgive my bones, my healthy little animals,
for bringing his face into your house. I’m glad
my dad got us out of Mississippi, you said, voice
sprouting for the first time after months of surgeries.
I sat, picture in hand, eyeing all the dead smiles
the ground has grown tired of. The year of extreme
heat, you said. You opened the backdoor
and the city, being merciful, gifted a breeze.