Читать книгу American Happiness - Jacqueline Trimble - Страница 9

CLOSURE

The summer my father planted grapevines,

we lived with our mouths in expectant hollows,

imagined rich fruit cool against our tongues.

We moved among the rows and whispered praises

to flat young leaves spreading out like fans.

And when the land sank in and drew the vines,

the tendrils like wilted curls, we kicked the dirt—

our flimsy hope shifting like air—and pulled

the disappointment around us as shawls.

But my father took his liquor to the vineyard

and drank a toast to his undoing. He took his sacrament

in faith until his soul was renewed. That night,

he plowed up the whole north field, straight through

the place we buried things, the weak pups, the runts.

The bones turned up with earth, rising from the dead,

as if they wished to touch again

the thin life unraveled with each breath.

My father cried, as always when he drank,

and knelt among the scattered bones. The leaves

of the pear tree descended like spirits. The fruit,

not yet ripe, bobbed like unlit lanterns.

He watched his breath unravel,

fly from him like dander. He might have caught it

had he not been clutching at his heart. The strong fingers

indented the muscle until he kissed the ground

in one last prayer. He could not take back

the work, the used up beats of his life.

He could not even keep the blood

that ran across his lip. Much later,

I read about a girl who saw her father

kill himself and then could not forgive

the amaryllis on the table, the giving up,

and oh, like that, the life wasted from him.

And if I could plow through earth

and touch my father, call back his spirit

and his flesh, I would tell him this,

then press my thumbs against his air

and kill him at my leisure.