In Dirt or Saltwater

There’s a thing like hair knotted against the walls of my stomach. Something’s forever changed. A piece of the sky has fallen away, and all the silt and muck trickles through, stuffing itself thick into my throat, down down to mix with the hair. My father is dying. Been dying every day. In lives before this, before gold and bark of cinnamon, before shadow of wingspan cloaking a field. In dirt or saltwater, in a wreck where he was the ship, both overthrown and sunk down, to be with pitchfork and bone, in oil, in a river with parsley on his tongue. Marked. Through hours and centuries. A festered foot dragged against a shore. In concrete. In mold. Against stained wall. In silk and soot. Oh holy eucalyptus and sage. Oh hymn for the dying. How many refrains? Oh burning root and building, storefront of shattered glass. On asphalt and sprig of flame. How to count and keep?

In this life, we lost him some time ago. But in my skin and in my hair, he is still dying. My lungs won’t refuse the memory of him. In spine and fingertip. In ankle bone. My father lies across the concrete. On my knees, a man is approaching. On my knees, a man wears dark blue and metal. My father is upright yet he is dying. Oh policeman, guardian of empire. Of rope and stone. Of burning mist. In my chest, my father is knocked to the ground. In my wrist, he clutches the knotweed in the concrete. In my eye, a kick to his stomach. Oh policeman, in lineage of gold and glory. Of barbed wire and chamber. Of walls and whip and stinging grass. Sing the purple mountains. Sing the gilded streets. In the tent of my ribs, a gun butt to his mouth. In the tent of my lip, a grip around his neck. My father, with the fate of pulp. My father, bloodstrung with a fist of knotweed.

How to mark the hours? How to bind the time? In my teeth, the man swings an arm like a sickle. It slices through my father’s breath. In my breast, they are as close as lovers, enough to lick the sweat and spit. My father is taking too long to die. Slow slow. He is upon my hip. He is lingering. He is loitering, stretched out like a flag. The man grows tired and grips his metal. My father, knotweed in a fist.

At first there was silence, crackling over the town like a brushfire. No one could speak. No one would speak. In the trees, in the cars, the lake and streets. Steeple and mall parking lot. Silence came in on a salted wind. My mother, my sister cried out against the walls, mouths open without sound. I lifted a strand of hair to my teeth. I ate in the shade of the quiet. I sucked the bulbous root. The faucet dripped and the door creaked and we only knew when we looked. The bullet in my father’s head sucked the sound. I plucked a G upon the guitar and the wood clenched its secrets. Every floorboard held its tongue. “Ma,” I said. “Ma.” She couldn’t hear me.

It was the t.v. that broke the silence. Out came the voice of a trumpet or maybe a xylophone. And then the newscaster, her voice as stiff as concrete. “A mentally ill man was reported dead on Lancaster Avenue today. Sources say he was throwing punches at a police offer until the officer was forced to shoot him, fearing for his life.” “In self defense,” she said. According to the officer he was assaulting a woman. According to the officer, my father was grabbing her wrists, yelling into her face, shaking her up, this wind tossed woman.

Across the screen, a picture of him, spread out like a rash. I had never seen this picture in the years between my father’s dying. He looked young but solemn, menacing even. It was him and it was not him. Paired with the words of...