i can hear her cry
when the lights go out
my rock gone soft
on the couch where
she sleeps

there is little peace behind
her eyes bluing dim
but she tells me of
the good dreams
when they come

like buying hotdogs on the
corner of central park
laced fingers with her brother
who died of brain cancer
weeks after surviving the war

she said she never needed photographs
every face and time was vivid inside
but her memories are going like her hair
gray and thin with the same dementia
that took her mother

her body is on autopilot
as her mind drags behind
and god is she coiled
tied in knots with generations
of deep hollow lives

for days she lay awake
on the couch in our living room
staring at the shadows
of picture frames that rise
like graves, everywhere

the time has passed
but vivid you stand here
three years gone
teeth eroded, some lost
in the alleys of los angeles

grandma said you called
from the hospital on mothers day
drunken mumbles about another guy
breaking your arm
you still don’t know I’m moving away
in august

i remember being introduced
to everyone as your daughter
you had lost rachael
and i needed a mother

you hid beer cans
in brown paper bags
the ones you used to pack my lunches
but it was better than mom, i knew
so i stopped counting on my fingers
the days left for her to come home

in your white mustang you waited
outside st. pauls for the bell to ring
out from under stained glass i ran
holding tight to those books of hope

and then you were gone
for years now my hands have held nothing
but paper heavy with question
but i’m leaving in august
and he just broke your arm

what was it like to sleep
with your head on subway stairs?
hair tangling with the days
unwashed
skin hugging around your bones
its hard to imagine
you ever being lonely

you rest your head now on anything
on windows, on streets, in your hands
lashes matted down that blink
like moth flutters
just searching for constants
something more than collapsing veins
pleading red and purple forgiveness

my baby girl, you say
the way it felt when i first held you
i kissed you on the small of your back
your elbows and toes
you were my only whole moment
your head resting on me
like i was sturdy enough to let you dream
and god
my laugh made you laugh
my smile made you smile

but now most days i cant remember
the last time i saw you
or if i can stop seeing you
as a tourist in my life
and we have years of money missing
out of socks
out of secret hiding spots
im tired of hiding

i don't know how
to restart the heart when
i put it to an end

it’s hard to know what i’ve truly written
and what i saved to rearrange later
but tonight a mother pulls her daughter by the hand and
walks her down the beach
thigh deep in water, a daughter holds her breath
dives under and is no longer hungry
tonight i dream her love is a needle I can see the point of

tonight i’m finished with god
i’m tired and i’d rather my words incoherent
and my eyes a distant place
tonight i’m seven and it’s the first time
i’ve breathed in to feel my rib cage
scraped clean

i sit indian style
core deep with space clear for you
a child’s heart is no place for
white powder and mailboxes
but i sat there, indian style

i cleared space for you
on the curb on palms and sawtelle
i learned here that no levee stands a chance
against people flooding over

tonight holy water burns through a house
with an ornamented christmas tree
two cars, and a beautiful daughter

i am still learning to forget claw marks
on the doorframes
that the crossing of state lines
doesn’t always turn wreckage to flowers

seeing your phone number feels like
waves of counting days
that were numbered & outstretched before all of us
the most important part of your story
will never reach me
because you kept them away and boxed
with toothpaste and fruit snacks
and knick nacks and heart attacks

but i cant help wondering if you knew
that your days were few
or if you woke knowing
this is it, this is it

if you can see her now
lying on that couch
everything inside her coming unfastened
the door to her private memories
unhinged & hanging in its tilted doorframe
missing you

grandma told me that they found your glasses
old and taped—shirts and shorts
threadbare and discolored
thats who i knew you as, my grandpa
the first to give and store away the better things

the closing of doors and of people is something
i have become used to
but rarely has anyone with such few words
been able to make my tears run with endless sincerity
and thats what i will remember you for
that dry humor that watered life into me
on days where i felt desiccated and barren

i cant taste the disappointment of packing away
a life you built from nothing
i didn’t see the shame of losing it all
but i saw someone who was defeated my whole life
whose eyes traced the floor at family functions
who no one would speak to because of the damage
so id try and crack jokes or talk about smaller things
to take the weight off

you taught me everything i knew about
filing my taxes
the important things, the ones you need forever
to sort my life into compartments, to make it easier

you taught me how to stop speaking in expletives
because I’m a smart girl, people will take me more
seriously this way
so when i get nervous or tongue tied
and don’t know what to say, just like now
i think of you and i find my words
to keep me from saying
i am, like, so sad and unsure of
how to deal with this
and to just say
i miss you and i am sorry
that you were battling all those wars
on your own

there are few people who love you at every angle
of who you are
and when those people are no longer
the air goes cold on the warmest day
and every evening feels like a time without end

i think i would rather be invisible while i search
through old letters and birthday cards
searching through old scars
trying to remember the last feeling like this one
anchored in the harbor of my ribcage
and if i told you what this feels like
i know you’d come back within hours if you could
with some remedy you read about
or some package of medicine
telling me to be well,
be well my dear.

i always knew i had your eyes
it was a strange feeling
knowing i had the windows
to a soul i never knew

deep set, greenish blues
but that was all we shared
she said

there is a picture of you
and i, only one
you with your shirt off
holding me in my nursery
pink walls and and a bassinet
not holding me the way you
held her
down—with your weight on top
forcing yourself inside
another fathers daughter

somewhere in maine
that man has a picture of his daughter
he held her even after you
where were you for my lips spilling blood?
my eyes surrounded by beaten rings
where were you?

the whites of my eyes went red
from the pressure of trying to breathe
through hands too tight
i spent days in the shower trying to
just drain the filth from the inside out
i cant get it out
it sends impulses to my brain
it makes me flinch at gentle hands

there is a picture of you and i
only one
somewhere down at the bottom of a box
stored away
and that is the only place
you have ever been to me