Before You Go, I Want to Love You

Dad, I want for you, the perfect life. The undead son. No divorce. Children who love you. Money enough for a house in the mountains and no neighbors except big bucks shedding their treasured antlers on your doorstep. Someone to love you the way you have always needed to be loved. In time and bites of food. Someone who fixes the bed with no creases, who could dig up rust and rocks, no fear of bears, or cancers, or what they have done to their children. A warm sky and never-snow. Relationships with your sisters. A gallery that asks for more paintings. Good teeth. Friends who let you cry with them, borrow money, sleep on the couch and never leave. For you to see your parents again. The ocean again. The house you grew up in again. That these things could be yours, untouched by hurricanes and economies, botched surgeries, God’s unrelenting hand. That you could be un-responsible for all of it. That it could come to you easy as heaven.

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