“Imagining I am someone who has lost a child
Seeing other people’s
children play,
I stand in the garden,
shedding
bottomless tears.”
-Ryokan
Portland is hot
the heat transfers from asphalt to metallic building
and back
the smell of fried doughnuts travels swift
and somehow makes the air heavier
I see my reflection in cafe windows
older now but I always feel
the same
especially approaching the Saturday market
enveloped in its swarm of booths
and people in between booths
a formless mass wandering a maze.
As I search for dad
one air becomes many
pad thai to bum piss to funnel cakes
to arriving at the river where we will meet.
This part could be clear and sacred
but it is trashed with ratty sleeping bags
stolen carts, empty Olde English bottles, soiled khakis
and people so caked in the streets
they are more streets than people.
These scattered piles of detritus
encroach on me, but there is nowhere to go
where they are not.
I inhale over the river
desperate to pull its fresh movement up
and through this lingering moment,
or perhaps to permeate my hatred.
Twenty minutes have never felt so stuck.
Another homeless man comes over the grass
with his house on his bike
wearing a wife beater and blue jeans that appear beige
and I cannot feel myself
I cannot hear the geese screaming
the amplified blues singer, screaming
I cannot hear my heart in my chest
This moment is entirely made of seeing
my dad
come towards his daughter
and
come towards his people.
Suddenly hugged and held in his chest
his tears reach a patch of my exposed skin
I do not look up
I stay embraced
I see the homeless looking over
and normal is no longer my hierarchy
my eyes cease darting, soften
and let down the whole river
I held in
here, this hug
remembers
that nobody desires to hurt
and that because I am my father’s daughter
these are my people too.