1986

Invisible and painful as a paper cut, the
years collapsed from emptiness, and
my father a cancerous stick, the
lightest thing for Death to take, telling
me why we are alone, as though I need
to hear.

The wind is best just after rain,
bourgeois and washed,
often mistaken for a living thing.
My father's voice is the wind that flows
through branches; my mother's, the wind
that stopped.