Prayer to my Husband's Father
- Prayer To My Husband’s Father
Watch over my husband, querido Abuelo. He is so like you: if you see him forgetting to do something you forgot to do, visit him in a vision, the way you came to Roberto in Missouri and sat on the foot of his bed, the way you came to my son in a dream, smiling, your face melting the window. Watch over me, too. Forgive me, I am unable to see you as a ghost. I depend on the photograph in a gold frame on the piano, your face and Abuela’s, side by side, each inside a cut-out heart. You look startled and a bit dour as if the flash came too soon and in the next moment you would be smiling.
Kathleen Kirk teaches literature and writing at DePaul University in Chicago. Her poems and stories have appeared in Puerto del Sol, Mangrove, and Spoon River Poetry Review. She is an associate editor of Rhino, a literary annual.
