dear papa

sometimes i forget your face, the way you held your
body before you were so sick. sometimes i forget the
way you unfolded your frame from the scratchy blue
chair in the living room, under high high ceilings,
propping open the encyclopedia of mountain birds on
the slippery varnished armrest. there are times i can’t
remember the tin of peanuts you kept on the coffee
table, the stale animal crackers you tossed at me as i
pretended to watch baseball with you, so quiet, so
quiet, a silent buzzing hummingbird across the couch.
sometimes all i remember of you is the taste of anis in
the every-summer pizzelles, the smell of insulin that
hung thick in your flannel shirts, the irrational fear
that rose up through my legs when you hid my baby
blanket, and the yellowing of your eyes on your
fiftieth wedding anniversary. i miss your long arms,
always brown, swinging me into the air, and your
hands, strong, tickling me until I screamed. i miss
your gruff instructions to clean my plate at dinner, the
butter knife prodding my elbows off the table, the
threats of no peach ice cream on the deck as the sun
was going down. i miss your garden, huge and
ordered, the scarecrows you built with your hands,
big and scratchy, in your workshop with the hammers
and the freezer full of fish. dear papa, it has been five
years and i think of you every time i smell sawdust,
every time i drink whiskey, every time i eat black
jellybeans. someday i will push seeds into rows in
the earth—corn and onions and green beans and all
kinds of herbs. i will water and sun my little patch
of ordered land, and i will sink my feet into the dirt and
remember.