Dad,
Did you have to lay your hammer down so soon,
And quit the road while mine was barely paved?
I never learned the true note of your voice,
Nor how your laughter caught the light of day.
I ask the wind, but the wind won’t talk to me.
They tell me that we move across the earth the same,
A heavy shoulder, a loose and measured swing,
An inherited grace that only blood can take.
They say the gap between my teeth is yours,
And that my eye for color,
Was a dye cast deep in the well of my bones.
I take their word, I search for the traces of you in the mirror.
Three years old is barely time to learn a face,
Much less the weight of wisdom or of flaws.
I still build a life of what-ifs in the dark,
What stories would you have pressed into my palms?
Which of your fires would you have wanted me to keep?
And what soft, breaking things would you have spared me?
Would we have stood as one against the dark,
A league against the world’s sharp edge?
This grief is a slow rust, it eats at the joints.
It settles in the wood time forgot to shape.
And god, it burns to know you stepped away
Just as the world began to hold its breath,
Before you taught me how to plant my feet
Or find the architecture of a man.
But here I am, I walk the line you drew,
Wearing half your face.
And I hope, as the seasons stack their weight,
You rest somewhere unburdened,
Knowing I am the harvest of your ghost.
okelododdychitchats 