Separation
Sometimes I feel like fatherhood
is a matter of standing still,
holding the crack of light open,
listening for the rumpled sigh
of a child back in bed, the terror
leaking in through loose seals of night
thoughts, caulked up by kisses, curing
slow. And then the other matter:
the pulling closed. I’m the servant
of the lonely dark, the bringer
to my children of time, the curse
laid on the heart that hears itself
beating, a sure sign it can stop,
that every light can be put out.
And what to make of that, knowing
how opening and closing doors
is the work of loving hands?
*
Ryan McCarty is a teacher and writer, living in Ypsilanti, MI. His writing has appeared recently or will appear soonish in Collateral, Door is a Jar, Pinhole, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Trailer Park Quarterly. You can find more of his writing at Politics of the Kitchen Table with My Family Crafting Nearby.
