it's all your fault, he pouts into my front lawn. pulling the lowest hanging branches down with his balled fists. heavy like the last few days of april rain we've only this afternoon gotten a winking break from. in the few seconds it takes him to run full thrust toward his father already unlocking the front door with a key to the building in which we all must have lived for the past few months, he hits the floor boards behind my back. in probably unwitnessed dust-stained sneakers and too-early-seasoned baggy grey shorts. shoving his fits madly deeply into the dark corners of his pockets he softly, bravely, says, i didn't really mean it.

i know, sport, his would-be father says carrying a canvas grocery bag a lot like the one i borrowed from my best friend the other day when she picked me up on a rainy soaking afternoon when i was wrecked with the thought of being myself and walking home in the rain and shopping at the corner store. without you. i know. and all of a sudden

i miss my dad.

the way he used to eat cherries from a white ceramic bowl--from the tree in our back yard that no longer exists--with a thin red rim in summer. the gentle way he knew how to speak to a kid. like me. how the weight of his hand on mine on the way to school when i was six used to feel like some kind of gift no other kid in my class--or maybe the world--with their gaudy loud mothers could or would ever in their lives understand.