When I Ran

When I ran through the glass tunnels of the airport, through

the stainless steel passageways, past the 

chocolate statues of liberty in 

green foil, 

when I passed the nickel-bordered windows, out-

side which the planes rode 

in place, like tugs on cement water—when I 

raced toward the torpedo-shaped chamber that would 

glide through the air like a male witch 

to carry me to my father’s deathbed, his 

last clothes before his grave clothes, 

I did not know what I would find. I so did 

not want to find his body 

without breath, his brown gaze 

shut, I didn’t want any indigo 

spots on his skin, the off-gold and purple 

on old jam, any rough discs, any 

raised thumbprints of spore on him, like the 

clots of flock on navy dotted 

swiss, my dark childhood dress. 

I flew through the air and entered the last 

room of his life, the loveliness of his 

not dry flesh, moist yet, 

we inhaled, and exhaled,

a night hour of Northern California

coastal air. And when it was over,

my sister arrived, and took me into

the waiting room, with its limited light, and she 

called on the queendom of language. I don’t 

think she had planned it, the time of secrets 

was over, she told me what our father had done 

when she was fifteen, and tried to do more, 

but she had run, and hid, 

and fled out into what had been—had seemed, 

to her, until that night, to have been the boundless world.