A Year Later

2017
Molly Van Avery

forgive his cancer
forgive pills;
forgive me, the daughter
absent when he alone
repeated their required ritual
of counting and sorting

forgive the gap
when that dad
was an alone little gay boy
hardly held in cigarette smoke
or bingo palaces
or the tribunal of the born again

forgive family systems that move boats away
from the dock of you, ferry driving fathers
who die too soon leading to fairy vision
questing dads who can’t die soon enough

forgive the borderline personality disordered
un-satiated kings who shift coast lines
denying or cutting caring like receding hair lines

forgive the defenses the resistances
this unclaimed love that meets walled fortresses

forgive the systems that refuse to fall
whose public looks up
at their towering maw

forgive me for my people
who hoarded what they earned
gave me what was left and 
look at this
forgive me again
for making
a life inside me
whose origin is scarcity and science
mixed in with queer defiance

forgive me for all this desire

tell my shame to quiet
long enough to love this riot
rodeo of soul becoming body
moving in the ocean of me
part whale and mystery

I swallow fish oil and sunlight
organs rearrange to make room somehow
like we do
less space for deep breaths
but more for all these temples of forgiveness

to forgive
like we make life
without thinking
our way to it
but just multiplying
forgiveness times time
despite and because
if we did not who would we become

even if we start small
as in I forgive me
it would be like when we see
a heart inside of us beating
the size of a pea