Toward Your Father

Toward Your Father

The ride to Jerusalem is quick at this hour, the roads empty, open. You
will be thinking about the distance between the side of the mountain
and the valley below. You will linger on this word—distance—and
watch as it slides and sinks along the mountain's edge.

You will recognize their street because the smell of it will remind you
of long Sabbath afternoons, pushing his large leather wheelchair back
from synagogue. The gate will be open—you will walk through it, the
door to their building on the right. Take the stairs, the elevator makes
the noises of a dying man and may startle them at night. The key will
take some time—be patient with it. First—to the left, then, slowly to
the right, then to the left again. Walk down past the stale kitchen, past
the guestroom and musky couches, past the bathrooms and moldy
shower, past the picture of your wedding hung crooked, past the
folding chairs snug in the space between the cupboard and the peeling
wall, past the damp, hanging laundry, past the finger painting that he
made last month, a line of green dots for the grass along the bottom,
blue for the sky. Walk into the room and there will be a chair for you
to fall into. This is not what I will become, you will whisper to
yourself, again and again. This is not what I will become. You will lift
the back of your hand and sway it over the dry of his cheek and like
this you will be reminded of the mornings in Minneapolis, when the
winter was bare, and the smell of his instant coffee was the house and
the entirety of it. Don't you remember, you will whisper into the
cracks of his skin. Don't you remember the mornings and the whole
yard frozen?