and her lips are moving, silently.
And then, almost too soft to hear but I hear it anyway,
she says
In Jesus’s name, I pray. Amen.
Driving
The doctor said my dad
can’t drive anymore.
Now, when the weather’s real bad,
Mama’s gonna have to drive me to school.
The doctor said to Daddy
Look on the bright side. You have this beautiful chauffeur.
Then he winked at Mama.
Look on the bright side, my daddy said back to the doctor.
You’re a total chauvinist.
Mama said she worked hard to hold herself together until they left that doctor’s office.
But when they got back in the car, she burst out laughing.
Zachariah Johnson! You made that poor man
turn bright red!
Bet he’ll think twice, my daddy said, about what dumb thing
he’s thinking about saying next time.
So even though the news about driving
was terrible, the two of them
just sat there, laughing.
Call Me Little Man
The first time you forgot my name
feels like yesterday. Feels like an hour ago.
Feels like I blink and you forgetting
is right there in front of me.
Me and you were sitting at the dining room table
doing a puzzle. Daddy, I said, your hand keeps shaking.
And you looked up at me, slowly. It was like your eyes
lifted up first
and then the rest of your head followed.
I don’t really know how
to explain what I saw. The way everything
seemed to slow-mo down
to nothing except your eyes
looking at every part of my face
like I’d just appeared in front of you.
What’s your name again, boy?
Daddy, I say. You play too much.
I asked you, what’s your name?
And then your eyes weren’t your eyes anymore
and I got up and ran through the house yelling for Mama.
But when I got to the top of the stairs I heard you say
Little man.
It wasn’t like you were whispering it, but it sounded like a whisper.
Little man! you said again. Like you were just figuring out
who I was. Little man. Your son.
And I came back down the stairs because
you sounded so sure this time.
The Whole Truth
Sun so bright over Maple
Daddy walks real slow down to her,
sits beneath her branches—all the leaves gone now.
I watch him from the kitchen window, see him
lift his hands high into the air
as though he’s reaching up for a ball,
snatch them back down again.
Again and again. Reach. Snatch. Reach. Snatch.
Beside me, Ollie watches too while his mama and mine whisper
in the living room. I hear the word doctors.
I hear the words don’t know.
I hear my mom say Bernadette, I think they’re not telling
the whole truth. Too many of them—
Then she gets quiet.
Your dad is so different now, man, Ollie says. I miss
your old dad.
He used to call me his son from a different mom and dad, remember?
Now he doesn’t really call me
anything anymore.
It was like . . . it was like I had a dad again, ZJ.
And now I don’t. Again.
I want to yell at him, but his voice is so tiny
that I want to hug him too.
So instead I just say
I miss my old dad too.
A Different Kind of Sunday
Now it’s Sunday night and the game’s on
and the television’s turned all the way down.
My daddy’s in his chair,
watching with his eyes half closed the way he does
when he’s studying every move
and trying to remember the rules, the players, the teams.
I feel like I used to know so much about everything, he says.
Where did my memories go?
And the confusion in his voice makes him sound
so lost and alone.
When I was small, I’d climb up on his lap
when he was home and we’d both sit there.
We didn’t watch the games together that much back then because
if it was football season, my daddy wasn’t home.
And I’d be watching him on television.
And those times when I got to go to his games?
All the other football players used to pat me on the back and ask
when I was going to get in the game. Or they’d lift me up
on their shoulders and call me
their good-luck charm when they won.
I was just a little kid back then but I remember
the sky above me. And my daddy smiling.
And the sound of roaring that must have been fans.
Cheering the team.
And me.
And Daddy.
I hope my dad can remember that.
Waterboy
There was Sightman and Chase and this other guy
we used to play with.
Right now, I don’t remember his name.
My daddy has his head in his hands.
Uncle Sightman and Uncle Chase. And the other guy
is Uncle Willy Daily, I tell my dad. They’re your friends who
played football too. Sightman was a wide receiver
and Chase was a running back and Uncle Willy Daily,
he was the water boy.
You guys always tease him
and call him Waterboy.
Cuz he really didn’t have no game, my daddy says.