—after Melissa Fite Johnson
If a poem resurrects, how many times
have I tried? I catch an earlier flight,
the day before, two days before—early
enough that he’s still speaking when
I arrive. Early enough to know he hears
me when I say I love you. Early enough
he can say it back. If a poem is a time
machine, I back up further, to the day
his body plunged to pavement,
to the day his lung popped, his heart
bruised, his spleen tore. I back up to before
the paramedics arrived, before they couldn’t
get the IV into his collapsed veins so they
crushed fentanyl and he snorted it. Let’s
go back further, rewind a decade or two
or three. Let’s go back to the diagnosis,
let’s start intervention early, let’s tweak
his diet, the drugs, the therapies. Let’s
give him more than 73 years, let’s give me
more than 41 years with him. If a poem
grants wishes, I want them all to say father.
