My Father

My father smells of work,

Like gasoline and metal and something spicy

That the wind blows into my nose,

And I can still smell him after he is long gone,

And I am sitting in the front seat with my mama.

She asks how it went,

A ten-minute meeting at a middle ground gas station.

I drop the money in the cup holder between us. Well, he’s fat,

As if he swallowed too big a bite of life,

And it thickened around his legs, swelled in his belly,

Sagged his arms, and filled his head.

She says I should try harder.

For years, we meet:

At a 24-hour McDonald's, at a grocery store

With my mama watching from the car or a far-off table,

Hoping (I think) that I find myself

In staring at his fingers or his chin;

The mustache, the bald head.

I never told her I forgot how he looked every time,

That I had to sift him out of a crowd

From maybe-killers alone on benches.

He would kiss my forehead with whiskered lips

And say he didn’t have long.

Neither did I.

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