I have forgiven myself
for far worse than the little sin which haunts
me hardest in stray moments of a day.
*
My nine-year-old daughter launches breathless
through the front door to say
her friend is walking to the park
with her family
and can she go, too?
*
No, I say, for obsidian reasons
I can’t now recall—but all of you
probably played a part.
*
I then read the expectation that I would
say no
in her immediate resignation
and in the minute which follows
self-loathing floods
my heart like sea water through the hull
of a sinking
destroyer.
*
“Yes,” I recant suddenly, “Yes, go.
Go,” with overperformed beneficence.
*
She runs from the house
yelling, “June,
wait!” with such desperation
sad hope
hungry empty
grasping at happiness—something more depended
on her little petition than I have ever been able to grasp—but
that’s where the memory ends.
*
Whether June and her family
were too far gone
to be caught, I can’t say. But I hear
“June,
wait” in bird song
in the shing of a knife sharpening
in the fluttering tissue that separates
this world from the terrible next.
