What My Father Lived

What My Father Lived


Time stopped.
My Father stood still

at the edge of a dock

built by his own hands
nearly three decades ago

"You forgot to ask," He said.

My knuckles white-locked

around the steering wheel, his tone 

calm, despite the forty-two miles per hour down the 10 mph dirt cottage road

"The Fear," I said. We both knew.

He wasn't them, my father, and

he was. Every last trace of him, left

Between the spaces of What Was and What Would Have Been

(Oh forgive us our Sins of Expectation, Dear Mother Mary, Kali Ma.)

Plans are better left broken
lest they be made, kept, and
disappoint.

I'll buy this motorcycle and burn down roads
We never knew.