Small Mercies
My mother knew how to stretch things
& did her best with my stepfather
Kept cash in coffee cans,
stashed it in sock drawers.
Truth had its hiding places too.
She gave us updates
on my stepfather's moods & benders
like weather reports on the radio.
& we were good at shrinking.
My kid sisters could disappear
into crayons, coloring,
a yellow sun in a clear sky
above a house.
I drew cars.
Camaros. Challengers. Mustangs,
as if drawing these machines
might summon a father I had never met—
In my dream, I manufactured
some greaser anti-hero
bent over a carburetor, cigarette
hanging off his lips, his hands drenched
in the black blood
that keeps an engine alive.
He tightens something.
A morning sparrow zips
past the hood—
& I am on my knees
Forehead against my prayer rug
before sunrise, Arabic on my lips,
while my cats circle me.Outside, Chicago
has not decided
to become morning.
& somewhere inside my breath
my mother is young again
counting change for a bus,
my sisters coloring
their possible skies & suns,
my father still cruising
some ghost kingdom
in a blue Camaro,
& me—
I lift my head.
A car rumbles past my window.
For a second
I think it is him.
A nearby bus kneels & exhales
at the corner.
Soon the first bird of morning
will make one sound
& then others will answer—
each small noise
finding its place
until even silence
joins the orchestra.
