A faded picture of our father and
BY BLAS FALCONER
you with whom I no longer speak,
taken before I was born, before
we fell out, before he grew sick.
Weeks ago, my neighbor and his wife
fought in their front yard. You don’t
love me anymore. You haven’t loved me
in years. What could he say? The photo,
fifty years old—how did it come to be
mine, our father in his green shirt,
and faintly, the face you will
grow into. What am I to do
with it? I run my finger along
the breakfast plate, touch the breadcrumbs
to my tongue. The small seeds
give between my teeth:
fennel, flax, sunflower, sesame.
The Good Guy
BY BLAS FALCONER
We stood on the back porch in the late
afternoon, crying hard but quiet so
the kids wouldn’t hear, and looked at
each other. After, tired, we fell asleep
on the couch, which we hadn’t done
in years. When we moved into this house,
we found a garden, and that first summer,
I picked tomatoes, squash, my hands
passing over what needed more time,
what had fallen to the ground, rotting or
half-eaten. When the season ended, we
let the grass spread over the dirt and
whatever else was buried there. I woke up
in the early evening to a sadness
like something I could point to, a painting
you hung on the wall, a silver bowl
you filled with coins from countries you might
never see again. I could hear the boys
playing in the next room—Now, I get
to be the bad guy, until one stopped
the game to say, I’m hungry.
Me, too, the other said, and you got up
slowly and made your way to the kitchen.
