It was the second night
of the first time I’d been home
in six years
All night the rain dripped
through my parents’
bedroom closet
And in the quiet bare morning
I found my dad
there
Alone
a hammer in his hand
before a now empty wall
I realized then,
as I realize now,
that time
had created fissures
in all of us
It broke,
with deftness
and silence,
an uncertainty in being,
leaving our firmament
in fragments
It occurred to me then,
as it occurs to me now,
that I was the rain
I was the distance,
and the silence, and
the destruction too
What I mean to say is,
there was an imperceivable
weight to my return,
an unrealized hope
tainted
with historic sadness
Something had to give
and the giving was here,
in the decay—
A slow rot
punctuated
by years of neglect
Surrounding us
were all the signs
of forced repair,
flawed connections
u n a v o i d a b l e
entanglement
Looking back,
I wish we clung a little more
to that moment,
Pressed our palms
against the
bareness of the walls,
Fingers soothing
a cut of carpet
never before exposed to light
Worshipping our home
suddenly inimitable
in its failed tradition
