Etude
- Etude
Today I slip into my father’s shirt. This red, this second skin such a fit against my shoulders,
such wear between the seams. I gather myself to greet him in the mirror, my face draped over
his, his stubble creeping through the sheet laid over my bones like a tent or the boney figure
chairs make during renovation. I’m under construction. The painter’s tape has been laid across the edges
of my wainscoting, my molding growing gilt by the day as the trees throw confetti on my birthday morning.
I stand silent in front of him as he appraises me, in the same way he says I love you, the same way he says you’re wrong. [End Page 126]
Dan Lau, a Kundiman fellow, has received grants and scholarships from apicc, gapa Foundation, Queer Cultural Center, San Francisco Arts Commission, and fawc in Provincetown. His poetry has appeared in Generations, Cape Cod Review, Crate, Pacific Review, Rhino, and Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry.
