I walked the snow-flattened grass
watching the smoke warp the light
around the chimney mouth.
When I was small, I’d stand behind him
as he sat talking, press my chest
against the ribs of his chair-back,
feel his voice run through my body.
But when the pushing and ridicule began,
I’d be lost for days, nowhere to stand
when he was in the room.
The glow from the photograph of us
leaning together against the car
braids with the sting
of each slap’s dull surprise.
I left his urn in the basement, the ash souring
with what should’ve drifted away,
the nights he’d come home from work
with a blade in his voice.
It was the sign to go to my room
while my mother danced,
trying to stay out of his way.
Two threads, the smell of his hair,
my hand missing the railing
as he pushed me down the stairs,
wound tight into a dour hue.
It took eight more times around the sun
before the weight of nights and days
squeezed all the pictures into one grief.
I carried the jar out to the woods,
spilled it in the leaves where the dust
turned into a gray slurry
with the stream that slipped from me.
Each time the promise comes
to the crushed remains of winter,
when catkins hang like earrings on the alders
and the day comes around again,
I reach down as if to touch him,
kiss his cold forehead
as he would never have allowed.
Mark Burke’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, Nimrod International Journal, and others. His work has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
