that walked everywhere with a boy who became my father, you’ve heard it—
you’ve heard it all before, the black dog with the rough patch,
brown over his left haunch,
waited on the riverbank as my dad waded in to fish—my dad
still says water is his saving grace, the thing keeping
him here. He lives
on a lake & the smell of water in the air stirred
when his stepfather creaked
the door with his belt. & there’s no sweet song
of a choir, not even on the radio
as the belt comes down on my dad’s
back & the dog growls, takes it on
the hip bone, on his dry nose, against
the bristle of long bared tooth. For hours,
that dog did nothing but watch & wait. I inherited my dad’s
jawline—you know this too.
I like to think I inherited his dog’s jawbone,
when my father cradled that dog
in his arms after a truck
crushed his body, you remember what that dog
did—licked his face, his tears, licked where he’d been hit—before
it died. I want to make something beautiful before I die.
To be that dog—did it even exist? Or was that
one more story
my dad told to make his childhood less terrifying?
A dog belted,
a dog living in my dreams, growing so large he is also
my father.