Notes on Papa

...

my father called me

close to midnight

on a friday

i had just finished some homework

after eight hours of work

a take-home dinner

and two beers

since he lives with his parents

and he never calls me

and his voice is so open

and liquid

and he laughs

and races me to speak

i know he has been drinking, too

i am caught off guard

make promises i am not sure about

and have the guilt you feel

when you tell a child you've been attending to

"we can do that later"

when you aren't really planning to

but aren't dead set against it, either

not that i don't want to see my father

i miss him terribly, all the time

but part of me thinks

its the kind of missing

that sticks around

when the person is there

the gapping hole where all that possibility was

(OR)

the shallow hole in my belly that once connected me to my mother

the cord he cut with glee

so happy to see me!

so sad to see me go!

too sad
to change
anything...

i love my father.

i miss my father.

i don't know how to be with my father.

i haven't seen my father in seven years.

every cell in my body has been replaced.

i'm not sure we will ever know each other

as anything but friends,

and i'm not sure i can live with that

but i don't think i have a choice.

he has been reminiscing about my mother;

he still loves her and it makes me cry

becuz she loves him,

but differently,

and it must be hard for yr love for yr lover

to turn into the love of a mother.

i love them both;

my love for each is fragmented--

i have the kind of nostalgia that is probably specific to children

whose parents divorced before they were out of infancy

(the kind of nostalgia that precludes any real memories

or

the kind of nostalgia that idealizes Monterrey, CA

where they met

in the early eighties

when men still wore shorts above their knees

and mom wasn't afraid to wear a two-piece swimsuit

becuz you want to know how the air feels

becuz you perceive it as yr place of conception

since yr conception couldn't have occurred without it)

all these exciting symbols

substituted for billion year old carbon

he starts laughing

like he is still young and the years

are fading backwards with each forward

extension of his joy

i want him to be happy

he says he went to the cottage

and to tell my mother that she needs to come down

to trim the tree

i want him to be happy

and he sounds so happy

i must know why he is saying this

i must know everything about their love

so i can recreate it for myself

so i can have the love i needed

make a cloak of their love

and wear it in the world

as a signifier

that i am a product of love

even if i don't remember it

i need something to make it real to me

please!

[i think all children want to be the product of love/

is that wrong?

what happens to the children of rape victims?

i am afraid that in

most cases

he still

comes to dinner]

my mother and my father

planted a tree together

by his family's cabin

in southern ohio

right near the state penn

it's a shade tree

it's growing out over the asparagus

he laughs

and i want him to be happy

...