My daddy comes back to me with a shy smile and holes in the palm of his hands.
He stands in front of his black Chevy car door and light clings to him. Floats over him like it belongs. My bags are in my mothers hands and then in his and then in the trunk.
My mama, she looks at him. She's speaking without a voice again and she's not saying anything nice but my daddy?
He speaks in tongues.
He speaks like a teacher in class room, mouth opens room goes quiet. Like a preacher, reaching for words, Sunday candy solid and cotton sock soft.
He speaks in increments. Words set in stone gliding across the bumps of his tongue each one rubbing against each other in smooth friction.
Gliding off teeth like raindrops from water spout, and I wait for those spiders to come out and wrap me up in their webs.
Instead he says,
"You remember me, baby girl?"
He knows I don't, but he asks anyway. Maybe he wants my recognition to come through the sound of his voice. Or the colour of his eyes, shape of hands, smell of old spice, tangerine, hair shaved close to head, I thought my daddy was dead.
I thought my daddy was dead.
Of torn clothes and tired men. My daddy, my daddy. He's here.
And I don't know him.
My mama, she pushes me forward and into his arms.
His hands stretch to touch my face and I feel scars healed over and crosses bared. A rugged softness like old carpet strewn with lint and dust warmed by sun through window. I rest there. Hands of a carpenter, hands of a healer. And my father is real and breathing I can feel him. This, is what blood feels like under skin and
this, it what air feels like nursed in lungs.
I had almost forgotten the sound.
Can you hear it?
A gravestone splits in two. A boulder is being moved. That's the sound of my fathers breathing.
1, 2, 1, 2, 1–
