My father never says:
“I miss your mother.”
Instead he asks
if I am eating enough fish.
This is Balkan male emotional openness.
Yesterday he sent me a photograph
of a tomato from his garden
with no context.
I stared at it for ten minutes
like it was a Renaissance painting.
The tomato looked honest.
Slightly damaged.
Sun-warm.
Very red.
Sometimes I think all men over sixty
communicate through produce
because language disappointed them early.
When I visit him
we sit on the balcony in silence
watching weather move through trees.
Occasionally he says something devastating
while pretending not to.
Last summer:
“Your mother liked when the house was full.”
Then immediately:
“Rain tomorrow.”
As if emotions are dangerous animals
that must be released quickly back into nature.
I inherited the opposite disease.
I explain feelings
like a tour guide in a burning museum.
Once I asked him:
“Do you miss her?”
He didn’t answer for a long time.
Then he pointed to the garden.
“The peppers need more sun,” he said.
I went home that night
and wrote a poem
about peppers.
He will never read it.
But the peppers exist.
And so does she.
And so do we.
And so does the silence
between the tomato
and the rain.