March 2022
Bio Note: I am a poet who enjoys dark chocolate, hanging out in the woods, and foraging for blackberries on my standup paddleboard. My most recent book of poetry is Gravity Assist (Saturnalia Books, 2019). I am also co-author of The Daily Poet: Day-by-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice. I teach poetry in K-12 public schools, at Bellevue College, and at Hugo House, in Seattle, WA.
The One Thing My Father Gave Me
was one-fourth of an Almond Joy, the understanding everything, once he and my mother were gone, would be divided equally among their four children. The one thing I ended up with: a wooden filing cabinet weighing 55 pounds I had to fly to Arkansas to retrieve from a tire-cracked, roof-leaking semi parked on the saddest lot in Prairie Grove. The one thing: a trip to FedEx, where they told me it would cost $179.00 to ship a two-drawer antique (?) with tiny nails sticking out of the top. When it arrives, not gonna lie, I shimmy it out of the box and two screws fall to the floor as if put there to remind me of my father’s favorite put-down: I think you’ve got a couple screws loose (is that him messing with me, or me wishing, again, for a sign that matter can’t be destroyed?). Doing my best to avoid the sharpness loosened from a 2,000-mile trek, I lug it up three flights, place it beside my desk: the one thing my father gave me, along with an ox-like stubbornness, a will to never give up.
In a Hotel in Arkansas,
with a pile of essays to grade, with the dread of having to see my father with a pair of holes in his chest. For draining. My father in hospice. My father’s lungs filling with liquid. His entire body weeping. Sponge-bathed by a woman named Alma. In a hotel in Arkansas, where I didn’t know the plane that had taken me there, the plane I’d thought what a nice plane—how clean, how new—was the same brand of plane that hadn’t made it past take off, its jackscrew set to nose-down. The same brand of pain but faster, more flames, the same design problem in the flight computer and cockpit display. His body’s stabilizer unstabled, his maneuvering system grounded.
©2022 Martha Silano
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