The last color I remember my father wearing
was yellow. He stood in the doorway the night
before he died, though we did not know it yet
at the time. He wore a terry-cloth bathrobe
wrapped around his frame, hiding how much
weight he’d lost the year before. Things seem
momentous after they have occurred, rarely before.
Before is mostly anticipation. Sometimes, loss
feels like a long-running rehearsal. No one
can quite get it right. It was a week we could not
have prepared for: the earth heaved from within
to make streetlights whip over sidewalks,
silverware fly out of drawers. We gathered
in the empty lot with the neighbors, bracing
for bricks to fly off chimneys, windows to crack
like sheets of brittle sugar. If I am still writing
about this, it must mean I am still calling on
his ghost. The last thing he ate was a plate
of scrambled eggs. When we took him
to the hospital, the traffic lights kept
changing to yellow—the color of caution,
the color of waiting between stop and go.
I think about him at the store, my hands
hovering over bouquets with sunflowers.
I think about him when there is news
of earthquakes somewhere in the world.
I can't separate these disasters from
the wound I carry, like a lick of late
sun trapped between glass.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
