IN THE PARALLEL VERSE
In the parallel verse, your father comes first.
He walks out with his sad pair of tits.
My father is not there until I realize, in the parallel verse,
I am my father. You are still you.
There are ruins of a playground in our breath.
The low stains of secrets soft on lips.
Someone plays an accordion that makes no sound.
Clouds are plastered on a wall of sky.
Underneath a lot of addiction—a pocket comb
From Walgreens or 1852—is unhappiness.
But no one till this day can say what that is
Or what it isn’t. It’s a job for twin larks.
In a parallel verse, we attention seek without
Ripping hands; we skid and scuff
By without being roped in by who or why.
And I think better than reunion is shared fate.
You crouch in a dark pink wood with a horn.
I walk by with dirt pants wet from a stream.
The night grows thick without irony.
As if to remind the grief has grown weightless.
In the real world, we cannot weep nor laugh,
Talk nor express anything like a coordinated truth.
Yet in the parallel world we are fretted diaphanous.
In the parallel world our fathers can’t hurt us.
