The little girl
with braids in clear
beads
and her father
above her,
eyes stained by cocaine
and rage.
We three sat together
under the steaming
palm trees,
playing with blades of grass
and listening
to the deepening violence
of rush hour.
All of a sudden,
he grabbed her ankle
and screamed:
her socks
were all wrong.
No part of her understood.
She climbed onto
his back
and kissed his neck
and laughed–
her tiny brown
throat trembling,
like a locust.
And her love was as deep
as his weird,
twisted anger:
much deeper.
The world came to life
underneath our bench:
maroon ants
and lichens,
moist roots, coming to life.
And he threw up storms
and cursed when he didn’t
need to.
The daughter looked through her father
with immense eyes–
eyes like jewels distilled from
the thoughts of very gentle animals.
She looked through him
and loved him completely,
like an assumption.
So when he turned around again,
I could see that he was
scared:
like a match who discovers
it’s just given birth to a forest fire.
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