To My Father Whose Pitch Has Always Been About Surviving
Years and years you tried
to teach me.
Now, I call home
to remind you of fragility—
as if I can protect you
from one thing
and, so, everything,
keeping mom, keeping you
alive and we know enough
to not ask until what?
The distance between us
collapsed by a phone line.
The world pitches variants,
firestorms, floods.
We go slowly toward
forgetting and forgetting and forgetting.
Now I am the reminder,
the pitch of my voice
often off or too high,
filled as it is with too much
gathering behind it—
The Flight Attendant Looks Back
Even though you arrive,
you’re never quite home.
Life lands unexpected.
Here, rain looms heavy,
days thick with leftover wet,
sudden deluge—you miss
not how the rain falls,
or how it smells,
but how you could see it fall,
from what distance—
you know you went too far, wanting
departure, connection—
a certain way of smiling, you left
expecting too much, you recall
now the scent of rain
on dry earth, a storm,
well ahead, above an open stretch
of high desert,
how rain evaporates
before it reaches ground.
