father’s last escape

like my father i was intensely awkward around the unwell.

he had a single pair of shoes—saddle brown leather.

he handled these as carefully

as neolithic skulls.

he first reappeared as an insect. arriving home, we opened the box, with its punched-in air holes,

and there he was, very green and flat as a tapeworm, mother relieved by the attentiveness

of his small yellow eyes, concerned, as always, that his size

implied inanition.

he was so small and silent he could be easily lost around the house, sometimes for days.

until he reappeared on a chair leg or doorframe, gently pulsing in a way that struck me as

uncomfortably sexual—he was still my father, after all. he seemed to like the spots

where the sunlight hit the wallpaper, following them for hours across the flaking peonies.

these periods of loss frightened my mother. i came home one day to find his body, so very like

a blade of grass, pinned to the noticeboard above the receipt

for a recently-purchased oscillating fan.

“coming to terms,” my mother said,

is a diplomatic metaphor.