He asked me a question that was not his question Why does the music have to have words at all? He means that to say the dead will only ever make them dead again. Outside the rain arced out; the widowed strands of a web, silver and perpetually falling. I wanted to strip the words from the air, let the piano repeat until grief exhausts itself. I know only a thin and selfish magic.

Beneath every mention of my father is the only truth he has ever wanted for me. He is going to die and my grief will be unremarkable. He is going to die and he told me so. He is going to die and this makes him not dissimilar to the constraints of a song. Every season dies eventually; this is what makes it a season. I ask too much, I return and return to this space before he could die. I hammer shrinking fists against my eyes, insistent, ugly as the fate of the rain.

SUMMER AFTER

After Gregory Pardlo

The summer after 4th grade

is the same summer I stumble

in on my father watching Purple Rain

for the first time     and I didn’t know

who was on the TV     half as well

as I knew his voice   and I didn’t know

any of the words     and I didn’t know

my father could cry   and I didn’t know

then that my father had lost his job

and would not know for a year

But here     my father eager to hide

his salt beneath his massive hands

hands that are so much like a ship

that has been loved through a storm

or battle leather or anything shamed

by its own softness     until he is the man

I had always known   while I ask him

What are you watching?

he looks at me        and I am small

when he responds

This boy lost his daddy too, but his daddy

taught him the music, now he’s playing

to show his daddy how much he loves the music

And I didn’t have the teeth then to say I was

sorry     I was defined by many openings

and still am      but I knew how to run

up the stairs and grab a stringless guitar

by its throat and run down the stairs

to strum air as I sat in his lap

and turned my face from him

so he could mouth all the words

perfectly

ELEGY FOR THE WINTER AFTER TAINA WAS CANCELLED

In the photograph      which never existed

I am roughly 7

on a block somewhere

near Michigan Ave

It’s worth noting that even

in the photographs

we have managed to save

I look exactly like my mother

save only the skin

We’re outside of an FAO Schwarz

which was a place the other kids

at my school went to buy rocking horses

which cost hundreds of dollars

It’s worth noting that

there is no word for the fear