looking at every part of my face

like I’d just appeared in front of you.

What’s your name again, boy?

Daddy, I say. You play too much.

I asked you, what’s your name?

And then your eyes weren’t your eyes anymore

and I got up and ran through the house yelling for Mama.

But when I got to the top of the stairs I heard you say

Little man.

It wasn’t like you were whispering it, but it sounded like a whisper.

Little man! you said again. Like you were just figuring out

who I was. Little man. Your son.

And I came back down the stairs because

you sounded so sure this time.

The Whole Truth

Sun so bright over Maple

Daddy walks real slow down to her,

sits beneath her branches—all the leaves gone now.

I watch him from the kitchen window, see him

lift his hands high into the air

as though he’s reaching up for a ball,

snatch them back down again.

Again and again. Reach. Snatch. Reach. Snatch.

Beside me, Ollie watches too while his mama and mine whisper

in the living room. I hear the word doctors.

I hear the words don’t know.

I hear my mom say Bernadette, I think they’re not telling

the whole truth. Too many of them—

Then she gets quiet.

Your dad is so different now, man, Ollie says. I miss

your old dad.

He used to call me his son from a different mom and dad, remember?

Now he doesn’t really call me

anything anymore.

It was like . . . it was like I had a dad again, ZJ.

And now I don’t. Again.

I want to yell at him, but his voice is so tiny

that I want to hug him too.

So instead I just say

I miss my old dad too.

A Different Kind of Sunday

Now it’s Sunday night and the game’s on

and the television’s turned all the way down.

My daddy’s in his chair,

watching with his eyes half closed the way he does

when he’s studying every move

and trying to remember the rules, the players, the teams.

I feel like I used to know so much about everything, he says.

Where did my memories go?

And the confusion in his voice makes him sound

so lost and alone.

When I was small, I’d climb up on his lap

when he was home and we’d both sit there.

We didn’t watch the games together that much back then because

if it was football season, my daddy wasn’t home.

And I’d be watching him on television.

And those times when I got to go to his games?

All the other football players used to pat me on the back and ask

when I was going to get in the game. Or they’d lift me up

on their shoulders and call me