For my father
in the dining room, action figures were imprisoned in a green vase, and you returned from prison with my uncle, looking slimmer
from pushups in sunbaked yards
mustache and dazed look gone, down on one knee, arms open wide & smiling with teeth I learned were fakes
I thought you were fake, too
unrecognizable, a stranger from a blurred past we no longer spoke of, only at grandma’s house, when we opened letters decorated by your brother with cut-outs from Marvel comics
& were told you were away on business –
I realize now, at an older age,
I was too hard on you & you were damaged,
haunted by the same night-screams as me
drinking, smoking, whoring
because you couldn’t contain the energy in your Marlboro veins
but as I saw you that afternoon,
you seemed fresh and full of life force
determined to walk straight out of the hell of our ancestors
but you didn’t realize it was a plank over stormy waters –
and that image – you in the dining room on one knee – has stayed with me
frozen in God’s Polaroid camera of love & heartbreak
and I can’t tell you now
but if you’re reading this in eternity
I want to say, “I love you”
(Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash)
