My father is standing there
in a pressed shirt and a knock-off Ralph Lauren
polo, and he’s asking me what angle
he looks best in, and bringing in lamps from the
living room and my sister’s
vacant bedroom, because it makes him look less
haggard, less like he
was run over by
time.Against a blank wall,
with bloodshot eyes and a smile that shakes
when I press flash,
he is standing there, sucking in the
pot-belly that only age can create,
and asking me if these photographs
make him look hirable,
and it’s breaking my heart,because sometimes you realize that
a life that a man is living, may not be
the life that he wants to live,
and that there are dreams that he shredded
along with old legal documents and divorce
papers, that he had to sacrifice
on cliff-sides, to keep you safe,
and one day he’s going to wake up
and there isn’t going to be anyone
to take these pictures for him any longer,
and he’ll have to go in for
job interviews instead,
and you know that he stutters
in front of people
who aren’t
you.
