Leaving
Mornings I lie next to your sleeping body, the amputated light grown long as my father’s old stethoscope hung over a bent nail, half-expecting to see, as I did then, vestiges of that time when I begged Father not to pack the infected tug of flesh inside my shoulder with bandages. I learned how bones can betray and sag, then freeze into the shape of something like an arm. He never could forgive himself for falling asleep while driving, and so I left him, arm healed, to his grief. He did not beg me to stay, and the dogged persistence of his hammer pounding nails into the boards over my door rings fresh regret into me as I tell you I’m leaving, that my arm need not lift across you any longer.