my father knows a ******.  it’s not my fault.  the two of them share a cigarette outside of a house they’ve never been inside.  it’s winter.  I scroll across Ohio on a sled with makeshift sail.  I associate sorrow with the very short.  I associate my father with sentences that end abruptly.  I wear the mark he meant to leave on the world.  I understand.  it is forgivable.  there are harder things to get in the way of.  a mirror, perhaps.  a hand on a bible.  my own hand, which tells mother I’m adopted.