My Father’s Heart

When this marriage proved so much like the last, when this wife too admitted an affair, my father’s heart broke a second time.

My father is not afraid of barstools. Once when he was young a barstool grabbed hold of his leg and snapped the bone neatly in two. He is also not afraid of this man next to him who sleeps with the wives of other men.

In a fumble at the foundry my father’s finger was smashed flat as the thin word forever. Two segments had to be amputated. Now that finger becomes a tall building his wedding ring dives from into his neighbor’s glass of beer. It dissolves there unnoticed. Golden in a golden pool.