The
last time you were able to walk freely, in December
your
look was a validating gesture of fatherly duty
sentiments
unsaid, floating in the aura between us
you
gave me a fifty and told us to enjoy ourselves
toward
the end of your life
we
told you we loved you and we’d see you again
I
learned to say these last two years
A
call the year before, just a Friday at the store
checking
voicemail in the aisle, wondering
through
the dead ends reconciling lives in gray matter
clogging
filters and in hanging space
that
kept drifting across the continent
somewhere
between numbness and anger
of
unrealized endings in process
The
visceral reaction is projection, a naked face staring
back
in a dream repeating mantras, the navel gaze
pathetic
attempts at comfort in return
finding
fault in the hardened lines
suffocation
in the space between them
in
the end, I own the frame and the memories
say
it out loud and choke them down
So
hard to get there from here, Forgotten Coast
isn’t
up on the board, no departure or return
the
pull of gravity didn’t rest for time
it
carved and caved in landslides
ridden
out and through momentum shifts
charted
out by points on a graph
that
emerged from the distance, filled
In
the present, arrivals to assist with care
like
a tourist away from worldly concerns
just
there to observe and reinforce the struggle
there
before me and then after I’m gone
helping
to move you, to spell her
placing
my hands in spaces for leverage
speaking
with words that were giving back what I’d been given
The
last time I could muster only thanks and love
over
the struggle and easing of breath
on
the phone near the end of your life
in
mourning drift cross-continent, the current
weathered
back to the pulpit, the naming in your stead
remains
in place of the journey, enclosing the circle
remarking
departure for us all
MM :11.2019 : Carabelle, FL
