fathers die “but when your father dies, it is your father dying”
some poet said and this is a true thing

Chips of the bones of my father exist now in a coffee canister on the floor
of my room.

This is what we are reduced to, pieces of ourselves we never saw or touched

Ribbons of grief tie up my hair, which I have cut off.

At five I broke a window with a baseball
a window in the master bedroom
and the glass rained down and the hole
where the glass no longer was
blinked black at me and tearfully
I went to my father and told
him the news. He held me and said
“don’t you know I will always love
you no matter what you do”

in the hospital room his brown skin smells like medicine and decay
and his cheek bones were sharper than his tongue had been
the oxygen mask over his mouth keeps him from speaking and for that
I am glad.

I always loved you I say
he closes his eyes and turns away before
shaking his head no

it is the loudest thing he ever says.

when I was 7 my father was unloading bricks from the back of the truck
he threw rhythmically and my sister thought she could run between bricks
when she fell, he screamed and jumped from the truck and held her
bloody head in his hands. He looked up at me and we were both frozen
by the tears running down his face

in the hospital he asks for ice over and over again and we don’t know
where to get it and he is angry with us and we have not seen him in three
years and we have not spoken to him in that same time and his hospital
gown is hardly appropriate dress for a reunion

I dread the opening doors of the icu
I dread the smell of his dying

one night I pray over him
I do not plead with God for his life
but for his peace

he growls and writhes through the oxygen mask the whole time
until he has exhausted himself and falls asleep
to my voice. 

when I was 18 I came home with a nose ring
my father made me sit at the dinner table
with a band-aid over my nose

in the hospital room he notices my tattoo
and as I hold it to his face so he can read
the words he makes a sound like “yes”
through the mask. His yellowed eyes
meet mine and then we both look away
I at the edge of his blanket, he at the edge
of his life.

Every day he sees further than we do
until he is staring into the face of what is next

the Japanese maple tree we were not
allowed to climb still sits in the yard
we left a long time ago

and the bones of my father lie
in pieces in a coffee canister
on the floor of my room