It's a Sunday morning and my family is restored.
You are sitting alone at the head of the table,
You and its glass sharing a luminescence
that suffuses the fugitive morning.
Your newspaper before you, your coffee,
your huge grin. The house reverberates
in its old harmony, who’s allegiance,
we learned, was to you–not us. The same
sugary cereals, the same extra layer of fat
that you periodically determined to abandon.
More than anything–more than even you–
my family is full, vital, youthful again.
If a whole is more than the sum of its parts,
Your presence endowed the whole that refuses
quantification. Holidays that did not precipitate
Screaming between the uncles. Vacations
Complete without Bobbi’s tears; or reports of
how little she slept. She commands our audience
to her suffering. Everything is the version of
normal that we yearn for since you got sick,
but not the real one. I am once again a child
and I turn to my father, knowing there are
answers best ignored. “How did he kick open
the coffin and climb from the underground?”
He tells me it is better not to ask.
