If April is a bright reminder
on the back of his tongue of my leaving,
if pollen & cherry smoke congeal
in his mouth. I wonder if my father knows
my new name & if he’d care to hold it,
just so—with all its letters spidered
between his fingers or if he goes,
as I go, down the corner
where all the streets are named for trees
& finds
the first stranger he meets and says
once I had a son & once I was a father,
now all the god I gather in my palms
won’t bring him back—I wonder if
the stranger understands, if a glance
at my father—barehanded as he is
on cypress or elm—is enough
to make a child of anyone.
I wonder if she takes his hands,
if she fills them with her own & breathes,
it’s okay, I don’t dream of fathers anymore.
Laurel Faye is a poet and writer currently pursuing her MFA in poetry with the New Writer’s Project at the University of Texas Austin. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Foglifter, Bahr, the Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin with her pet budgie, Pigeon.