My father doesn’t imagine in God or therapists—
as a substitute, he pedals his bike previous Brighton Seaside
to the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.
As soon as, I went with him and watched as he emerged
from the locker room in light swim trunks
shifting slowly to the sting of the pool. He paused,
lifting his palms over the grey halo on his chest,
urgent his palms collectively in a gesture
I do know he discovered as a boy.
My father’s eyes: religious with a darkness
he retains buried deep inside
the place it glows hell-hot because the ember
from the cigarillo his father—a womanizer,
drunk, half-asleep—dropped on the sheets
setting the mattress ablaze, and although extinguished
saved smoldering invisibly contained in the mattress springs,
reigniting, sending the home up in smoke a second time.
So my father’s anger burns, a blood-wicked flame
scorching by way of the softest elements of his inside
till it rages by way of the home,
blackening the rooms once more.
Even within the absence of ideology
I’m making an attempt to be taught forgiveness—
I watched my father’s physique breach the air for only a second
earlier than he dove, disappearing beneath the floor.
Steam coiling by way of the chlorinated room,
the ripples his physique made nonetheless reached me on the opposite aspect.