"Whereas"
I heard a noise I thought was a sneeze.
At the breakfast table, pushing eggs around my plate,
I wondered if he liked my cooking, thought
about what to talk about.
He pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose,
squeezed his eyes.
He winked.
I often say he was a terrible drinker when I was a child.
I'm not afraid to say it because he's different now,
sober, attentive, showered, eating.
But in my childhood, when things were different,
I rolled onto my side, my hands together as if
to pray, locked between my knees.
When things were different, I lay there
for long hours, my face to the wall.
Blink.
My eyes left me.
My soldiers, my two scouts to the unseen.
And because language is the immaterial,
I never could speak about the missing.
So perhaps I cried for the invisible,
what I could not see, doubly.
What is it to wish for the absence of nothing?
There at the breakfast table, as an adult,
wondering what to talk about, if he liked my cooking,
pushing the invisible to the plate's edge,
I looked up to see he hadn't sneezed.
He was crying.
I never heard him cry, didn't recognize the symptoms.
I turned to him when I heard him say,
"I'm sorry I wasn't there, sorry for many things."
Like that curative voicing and opened bundle
or medicine or birthday wishing, my hand to his shoulder.
"It's OK," I said.
"It's over now."
I meant it because of our faces, blankly, because
of a lifelong stare-down, because of centuries in sorry.