The Attic Only Opens After Sex
I would be a bad dad;
When the attic opens.
Crayons melt in my hand,
seeping through the floorboards
I lie beneath.
——— I. Divulge
A man gathers his clothes from my floor,
checks beneath the bed for a sock,
kisses me without looking
and pulls the bedroom door shut.
Then the broken closet mirror exhales.
Behind it, a hole appears
wide enough for my shoulders to fit through
if I promise not to breathe.
I climb through carrying whatever he left behind:
a pink condom tied in a knot,
one wet towel,
the shape his body pressed into my mattress,
a name I will pretend to forget,
and one sock with the heels rubbed thin.
Ive kept the men
I’d rather not know here.
Once the ones I would have let stay
Decided they’d rather go.
Their ribs lean against the rafters.
Their mouths hang open inside garment bags.
I call what hardens on the mirrors pity—
though pity has never stares at me this long,
not unless it’s mine.
——— II. Clutter
My father found me beneath this room
when I was twenty-six,
tangled in another man’s breathing
The closet door had split from its track,
my poems taped across the walls
covered what the glass kept showing him.
He said I would make a good dad.
He said I should be grateful
for the one I had.
He said doing drugs was bad
and the art on the walls
was a cry for help.
After he read the poem
where I asked the moving lumps in my chest
what they wanted from me,
he decided I was equal parts
sad and mad.
He went home
without asking either part
what it needed.
He didn’t make it to 45
I’m sad to say it
but not sad enough to have it make me cry .
Bad fathers carry earthquakes
just beneath the skin.
They leave when their children
stop calling the the facial tremors
opportunities for apologies.
When the going gets tough,
the puff gets going.
All fits and starts,
And all of a sudden we land on
calling drugs stuff.
We text a man who sells us a bag
where emotions can be stored overnight
in exchange for a little bit of tomorrow.
That is why I am up here—
knee-deep in the magma
of brain matter of the last 10 years;
digging through missed phone calls,
overdraft notices,
birthday cards I never mailed,
and photographs of beds
that no longer remember my weight.
——— III. Red Crayon
Something begins dripping
from the ceiling.
First water.
Then wax.
Then a small hand
holding a sheet of paper.
The rest of him follows slowly,
head first,
shoulders narrowing through the plaster,
his body slick with insulation and dust.
He lands barefoot.
He looks eight,
Maybe sixteen or thirty-two,
or the age my father was
when he first learned
he could leave to work
and still be called a father.
The boy holds out his homework.
His voice screeches
The sound is a fist
closed around a number-two pencil.
“I showed my work.”
The page is covered in arithmetic:
He added every night
I wanted to disappear.
Subtracted the nights
someone answered the phone.
Carried the one.
Divided the remainder
by every man who said
he would stay until morning.
At the bottom of the page
he has written:
STILL HERE
Its circled twice.
He wants me to say,
Good job.
He wants a hug.
He wants the red crayon
melting between my fingers.
I look for a gun
loaded with a story
about what life has done to me.
Something I can point at him
and call explanation.
Something that will kill
whatever drops from the ceiling
each time I understand
I have been wrong.
Someone says
“I am what happens
to kids who like to talk to strangers”
The boy keeps holding out the page.
I cannot look at him long.
I know what regret grows into:
phone calls allowed
to ring themselves quiet,
the missing shape
on one side of the bed,
working until midnight
because money is easier to hold
than another person,
a father standing outside
his grown son’s bedroom
waiting for the evidence
to put its clothes back on.
The boy steps closer.
The paper trembles in his hand.
The wax is running through my knuckles gathering in my palm as I try to keep it the red crayon together.
I tell him
he forgot to label his answer.
He looks down.
I hate myself
for sounding relieved.
Then I kneel.
I press the warm crayon
into his hand.
“Good job,” I say,
and the words come out
with my father’s voice inside them.
The boy takes them anyway.
I put my arms around him.
He is hot and damp
and smells faintly of the room below.
He does not forgive me.
He only leans in.
Together we press our thumbs
into the melted wax
before it has time to harden.
EOF