Dear Dad

It’s been a while since I’ve written,

but you hear from me from time to time.

Last week I asked you

whether apple cider vinegar is good

for a sore throat, or does it just burn the shit out of it?

I often adopt your phrasing or hear your voice

when I talk to you in my head. Your voice’s depth and gruffness.

I can do a fair imitation of your frustrated rants,

hitting the “g” and “d” in “goddamn” the way you did.

I promise that I took extra vitamin C

when I had a cold this winter.

I couldn’t remember your other remedies.

When I felt really bad one day -- joints aching,

sinuses packed with snot, unable to sleep --

I imagined you looking at me and smiling a little,

then exhaling, your breath acknowledging my suffering,

reminding me it was temporary.

In this new relationship of ours,

you don’t feel the need to rescue.

You only need to keep me company.

I think we have turned a corner.

The sharp edge of that corner,

your permanent gone-ness

and the smooth flat wall on the other side,

a holding-on of what we have now.

Your eyes-squeezed tight expression as you laugh,

or the creativity of your patchwork profanity.

Somewhere I can find a thread to tug on

where I see a small me accepting a hot pepper

from your hand and us singing “looking out my back door”

on a porch I don’t remember.

And when I believed the thread ended

with your cool, waxy skin and bunched-up whiskers,

your bandaged arms, I see there is more. Stories I can tell you.

You only need to listen. You tell no stories of your own.

I know then all anyway, the ones just about me.

A young dad and his first child

trying to make it fit

and sometimes even succeeding.

Hawaii, June 1967