Lost Music

In the backseats of cars, I used to shimmy

the seatbelt low around my waist

despite, once, a friend’s mother threatening me

that doing so would slice off my breasts

if there was an accident.

                                    Not even ten years old,

I was too small to sit in the passenger seat.

Her concern with the flaccid fat

on my chest confused me,

as if the mother understood about my body

                                    a secret I didn't know.

I told no one my new fear,

but didn’t stop wrangling the seatbelt like a lasso,

daring something to happen. Once,

in winter, I watched my father,

driving, tune the radio, searching for

a good song or classical, whichever

                                    came first. We didn’t speak

over the electric static, stray notes, and chatter

that garbled together into a stillness.

All my life, people have branded me carelessly

with language. That mother’s fear

                                                still cuts

between my breasts. And that December day,

like a dream, my father, wordless,

drove us somewhere I can’t remember and

                                    no accident happened.

Now, the ordinary words that passed between us

are gone. He lives only in my mind and I miss

the silence surrounding him, and also the music.