CLEAR
He said his daughter
recently taught him about eye contact
Still wrapped in pink swaddling
tucked into the crook of his arm
His tattoos swell and dance
to curl her closer
Pull the Precious of her
against the Mighty caged behind his chest
This will always be his reflex
This much, he knows
I do not tell him of the splendor aligning itself
along the traffic of his nerves
This Daddy Game is not for the weak. Those men are simply fathers.
I don’t tell him about the recalibration of “infinite” and “unconditional”
Don’t warn him that her eyes will slice clean across his palms one day
Ignore the slow drain of his courage for a while
Seal him closed again, much later,
when he can see his full reflection in her smile, in her eyes, again
I don’t tell him any of this. Not now.
It’s best this way
Now, he’s wistful about his armful of Miracle
seeing him for the first time
Tilting her small head
Snapping him into focus
Evolving his presence from Familiar Silhouette to Forever Superhero
with one fairy lash flutter
She seized him with potent conviction and
made a pinky swear to induct him
into the legion of Giver of Shoulder Rides,
Holder of Hands, Putter Togetherer of Doll Houses and Bicycles and
Wiper Away of Unfallen Tears
She will tether her wide eyes to his whenever he is near, now
Seeing him with precision
Adoring him on purpose
He will never be able to force this love into suitable words
I do not tell him this, either
In spite of the books and the classes and the old wives’ tales and
all of the unsolicited advice, he will still peel Dumbfounded from his face
over and again
Expose layers of devotion and awe
to be kissed whole again by her sweet gaze
He will mutter seven thousand humble prayers to God
and twice as many praises for the days he is blessed
to have her look up at him and
know
he is there
for her
always
My friend learned a little something
about eye contact from his infant daughter recently
I didn’t bother to tell him that he ain’t seen nothing yet
(c) Dasha Kelly 2011
He said his daughter
recently taught him about eye contact
Still wrapped in pink swaddling
tucked into the crook of his arm
His tattoos swell and dance
to curl her closer
Pull the Precious of her
against the Mighty caged behind his chest
This will always be his reflex
This much, he knows
I do not tell him of the splendor aligning itself
along the traffic of his nerves
This Daddy Game is not for the weak. Those men are simply fathers.
I don’t tell him about the recalibration of “infinite” and “unconditional”
Don’t warn him that her eyes will slice clean across his palms one day
Ignore the slow drain of his courage for a while
Seal him closed again, much later,
when he can see his full reflection in her smile, in her eyes, again
I don’t tell him any of this. Not now.
It’s best this way
Now, he’s wistful about his armful of Miracle
seeing him for the first time
Tilting her small head
Snapping him into focus
Evolving his presence from Familiar Silhouette to Forever Superhero
with one fairy lash flutter
She seized him with potent conviction and
made a pinky swear to induct him
into the legion of Giver of Shoulder Rides,
Holder of Hands, Putter Togetherer of Doll Houses and Bicycles and
Wiper Away of Unfallen Tears
She will tether her wide eyes to his whenever he is near, now
Seeing him with precision
Adoring him on purpose
He will never be able to force this love into suitable words
I do not tell him this, either
In spite of the books and the classes and the old wives’ tales and
all of the unsolicited advice, he will still peel Dumbfounded from his face
over and again
Expose layers of devotion and awe
to be kissed whole again by her sweet gaze
He will mutter seven thousand humble prayers to God
and twice as many praises for the days he is blessed
to have her look up at him and
know
he is there
for her
always
My friend learned a little something
about eye contact from his infant daughter recently
I didn’t bother to tell him that he ain’t seen nothing yet
(c) Dasha Kelly 2011
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DILLARD
I don’t know why I said it. I honestly don’t. The words were just sitting there, resting against
the back of my throat. It’s true that my mind plucked the words fresh, and placed them along
my tongue like ripened peppers. Still, I don’t know why I spoke them.
Worse than giving them volume, I think what really got me nailed was the fact that the words
hardly scratched at the insides of my lip when they tumbled out. They didn’t tear or scrape, I
think, because I didn’t mean for them to. Even after the words spilled from my mouth, spinning
like jacks, and sprawled out flat and naked for everyone to gawk at, I didn’t mean them the way
they fell. Obscene, spread-eagle, crude. I really didn’t mean them at all.
Killing my mother.
This is what I said when Mr. Sayler asked what I was thinking about so intently.
“Killing my mother,” I had said.
It was my flat, empty tone, apparently, that allowed those three words to swallow everything
in the small room. There were eight of us in class that day. If you can call this holding pen a
class. We usually spend the hours rummaging through our imaginations to ignore the lesson, if
we're not emptying our ink pens into angry notebook art or harassing the teacher. Or, we're
assaulting the asshole who squirted ketchup on your sweatshirt last semester. Anything except
pay attention.
Which is why we’re together in this class. We’re not the only kids who daydream as a way to
survive school, but we each discovered at some point that our mindscapes have more clutter
than other students', and possibly more barbed memories from which we try to duck and cover
from. We can't pay attention, actually.
So we pretend to listen and the rotating staff of instructors pretend to teach us things. For
me, the arrangement works perfectly because I’d much rather be inside my Technicolor
thoughts than out here. I don’t have the brutal warriors up there, I have enough of them to deal
with in real life, where it’s all monochrome and people
can’t seem stop screaming and crying and inventing new labels and prescribing new pills and
telling more lies about places their fingers had no business.
Some people call it “lost in thought,” but I’m never lost in there. I don’t always know where I’
m going, chasing the tail of one thought and then another, but I’m never lost. Whether my mind
carries me to the 50-acre ranch my grandfather owned or into the
soup kitchen my mother takes me to volunteer on every birthday, I am at ease and at home
with all of my thoughts. Even the ones that send me scaling scale the ridges of corroded
memories, I know I’m safe inside here.
“You’re planning to kill your mother, Dillard?!” my father shrieked, his foamy spittle
spraying my face. My father has always been an animated and uptight little man. My theory had
been that he hadn't yet realized he was gay, once I learned
what “gay” was, of course. My mother did not favor this outlook, but I don’t trust her judgment
anyway.
Right now, though, my mother was crying again.
For what felt like the thirty-thousandth time, I tried to explain how the sentence happened
and that I was not plotting my mother’s death. See, I love to read. And on the ride to school I
had just finished a murder mystery book with and ending I totally didn’t
see coming. The killer wasn’t the arch-rival dog breeder, like I thought, but a rabid fan who had
stalked the pro-star until he snapped and killed him. I was replaying the flow of the story in my
mind –something I like to do after a really good book- and wondered how it happened for
regular people to lose it like that. Which made me think of news stories I’d seen about everyday
cubicle employees and government service clerks just cracking into pieces one day and
showing up to work with loaded rifles. What kind of stress is that?
What has to happen to push someone that far? Especially “normal” people who kill their
entire class or their ex-girlfriends, their kids, or their parents. Does every person have a killing
point, I was thinking. I mean, what could possibly ever be so horrific and wrong that anybody
would be willing to murder someone in their family? I wondered what might ever push me to
the point of killing everyone in my class? Kill my therapist? Kill the counter clerk at the drug
store? Kill my mother?
And that’s when it happened. That’s when the words fell from my mouth. That’s when I
realized we’re all a little crazy, even when we don’t mean to be.
My mother was still crying.
(c) Dasha Kelly 2008
2009 Finalist: "Dilllard" by Dasha Kelly