Home again I hid underneath blankets
like a kingfisher and waited for you
for hours, until eventually the clock
stopped working and my father had
to come in to get me up and turn on
the light and put on the air conditioning.

It was 83 degrees the day I came back,
heat swelling from the ground the way
your cigarettes did, dangling from
the fingers of your left hand like old puppets.
Later that hand would find its way into
my body and I’d go numb. That first night back

you read to me the way my father always
did; you were best at making me feel
like I was three years old all over again,
vulnerable as the rats quietly roaming
our ghostly wet basement. You read Narnia
until I began to sleep. I hated my snores
but you pressed my face to your stomach
so that I could hear the beestings that roamed there.

Look, they’re like yours, you wanted to say, but you
never knew how. You could never hammer
words the way most could, but you still
made me ache like the high school chorus:
goose bumps against arms against desks,
shivering all over again underneath ceilings
instead of skies.