We Inherit What the Fires Left
Page 1
Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Dedicated to Beverly and Linda and Langston and William. Who sacrificed so much to make their granddaughter possible.
Storytelling is a form of tribal propaganda
—Will Storr
GRASS GROWING WILD BENEATH US
THE ENGINE
The sun fell out of the window,
our daughter caught it with her teeth.
Every nightfall
is a black they can’t murder.
The days my car makes it
to the garage are the days I can live forever.
Even flattened against the street, an officer’s
knee in my back, I look young for my age.
They say you can chart time by stargazing or
knowing all the stars you see are already dead.
If the tops of trees are the newest life, everything
from my father’s land looks like the future.
When I retrieve the mail, I am reminded
of what can outlive me.
When I was a boy, we gathered
sticks that resembled bones.
We tried to resurrect our ancestors, but they refused.
We have given you death once, why would you give
that back?
I had a cut above my eye once
and assumed everything I saw was bleeding.
The ground is better at giving us names
than the sky has ever been.
THE TRAIL SAYS THREE POINT ONE MILES
We know how old we are by remembering
our company while we walked this trail
the beginning when there were less
of us jogging and counting the miles
sweaty and owning our breath we drove
to your condo which was still our home
and showered for a long spell
picking the wild from each other then
when we were pregnant and you refused
to not finish the trail I was so cautious then
you would probably never succumb to anything
but I was brutish and remembered
this wasn’t your first pregnancy
only the one that had lasted this long
later we brought the stroller because
she loved the buzzing air too sometimes
she would run along with you like a second hand
catching up to the hour sometimes
she stayed in the stroller while I pushed
her up each hill once we saw a deer
slowly venturing through the thick
head high as a lighthouse the brush parting
like a royal court the girl sat upon
my shoulders saying daddy daddy
daddy until the other deer emerged
and there was nothing left
to say we had been here before all
of us with the grass growing wild
beneath us
INTERROGATION
The morning has rhythm—
wake her up, get dressed, eat
breakfast, brush teeth,
shoes on, then the door. It is
true, even if it is still a sprint.
Not every morning is made from
God, so it is left to me to improvise
upon the machine. Bring
the clothes downstairs, eat in the car
or be ready to pack everything
you can. She is fully dressed,
hoping the morning
will make me forget that she
needs to brush her teeth. It does
not. I can’t brush my teeth if
I already have my shoes on.
She knows this is not
how logic moves around us,
and yet she tries. Not all
gulfs will be this easy to bridge.
She calls the baseball a football
and I correct her. She says
her grandparents are in heaven
now and I say close enough. I never
know what windows are worth
destroying. She knows that I am Santa.
I have driven into the night and returned
with ice cream at her request then
betrayed her by smiling about it. Lost
a game of Connect Four twice. Pretended
to not see her hiding behind the couch.
Told her why she will never have
a brother. Once we roamed around
the woods and watched a deer
beautiful and liquid move among
the tall grass. The girl’s eyes widened
until light came from them. She whispered
even though the deer knew we were
there. Daddy, it’s so cool, she would say.
And I was silent. Smiling, I thought,
Did you know some people shoot them?
SOFT PRAYER FOR THE TEETHING
Be it the miracle wounding.
Be it the tearing of one’s own
body to allow invasion. Be it
the song that won’t be suppressed.
The courtship that only happens
at nightfall. The flattering
that happens from outside
the window, but must shatter
the window to be heard. Be it
the ceremony of ache, the feigned
consent. The world opening
inside of a mouth. May these gods
enter and never leave. May they
never be betrayed by a car crash
or unloved lover. May the pain be
a gate broken once and mended again
and again and
LITTLE LIE
Close to her school the lights of the ambulance
splay across the interior of the car. I see
the new shades of my daughter recycle
across her opened face. There is a car in front
of the ambulance, nothing we can see wrong
with it except for the not moving. It is angled in
the turning lane like an invasive sunray into a quiet
room, a thorn among stalks. The bicycle lies
much farther away, the front wheel contorted
around the wooden pole emerging from the concrete.
The back wheel is gone, as if slid in some
mischief’s pocket. Chain loose and resting
on the sidewalk. There are no people among
the macabre, unless you count the ghosts. My daughter
asks what happened and I lie the little lie.
I don’t know what happened, love.
I say it again and again like a chant
or a wish or something to fill the air
until the lights light up someone else’s sky
and can do nothing more than chase us.
MIMIC
Copycat: Mimic:
the little girl knows this game
now, repeating everything said in front
of her, bubble, giggle between
each failed attemp
t. Tortured
her friends all day and now starts
in on her mother.
Put your shoes away
your shoes away.
What do you want to
what do you want
eat
eat.
When she begins to place
my words in her mouth
the jump is not far for her—
she is already my mimic after all,
having taken my nose
and eyes and smile for her own.
Ok: Ok:
Stop: Stop Now: Now
My words are the least of her talent,
though she looks like me in absolute
silence, arms tied like a bow across
the whole of me/her until I solve
the riddle with silliness as I begin
tickling her until she can’t take
it, thrashing on our floor
Daddy: Daddy
Stop: Stop Not: Not
Fair: Fair
You’re: You’re Cheating: Cheating
I don’t apologize for breaking the rules
between my fingers as I’ve broken
things not as easily forgivable between
them before and it’s this I want
to blanket before my mimic picks
up on it, before she takes away another part
I’m not ready to laugh away.
BECAUSE I WAS ONCE GOOD
I know how difficult baseball is and because she is
good at most things, I know how my daughter reacts
when she fails at something. It’s baseball today,
yesterday was archery with a plastic weapon,
and every day is handstand day. The red bat slung
across her shoulder like she has been here before,
I warn how hard it is to hit a ball moving
at you, I try to prepare the ground beneath her
new gravity, admittedly more for my sake
than hers. She hits the first ball, then the second,
only missing on my too-low toss, every contact
brings a levitation of triumph: I hit it again, Daddy.
I too am caught in this firework, the uncanny
learning of ascension, and ask, Do you want to play
softball, love? and she says, Um, not really,
as she connects again, the ball sailing out of view.
ON THE FIRST SNOWFALL
my daughter begged me to play outside
so we wrapped ourselves in every shield
we could find. I try to tell her about the frostbite
that took her great-grandfather’s fingers and made
him left-handed, but she never met him, so she
looks at me like, Whatever. In the snow for twenty
minutes, which might as well be generations, and
when I tell her we’ve lost enough heat to never truly
be the same, she dunks her face into the only
untrampled patch of yard we have left and comes up
for air, a fallen night’s worth of frost on her face.
Doesn’t my beard make me older? Of course
she doesn’t look older, but she does look less mine
than she did a moment ago and since this is what
getting older means, I say, Yes, love, before
I disappoint her or she disappears into the wind or
until the snow lingers so long, I can no longer tell
the seasons by what collects beneath us.
INHERITANCE
Every year we freeze
our asses off to buy
a fresh Christmas
tree. My wife asks
patiently why we
continue this practice:
a metal tree makes
more sense, probably
better for the earth,
probably better on
our backs, budget,
but my pops always
wanted fresh trees
even when he didn’t
have a family to gather
around it, even when
Christmas became
another cold day
interrupting the week.
If I’m honest, I don’t know
what idols to keep
and what blood oaths
to break—I don’t love
anything enough
to forget its birth.
I don’t hold any sin
separate from
the father. I take
all the history
into my mouth
and swallow
without tasting.
I pull a tree
through the house,
its needles tracked
through the kitchen,
the living room,
the mess stuck
to the bottom
of shoes and coats,
place the monument
in the middle of us—
even if for a short
time, even if I am
the only one who
will water it.
GOOD STORM
A good thunderstorm
can still knock some sense
into the night, still pull
the wind from dreams
you didn’t plan on re-
living, still send a child
from her bed as if it
were a hum
under her skin, still carve
enough space between
her mother and I to make
a house a home, still
find a lake of ageless
water under our covers
where she is still the age
she first found this quiet,
and aren’t we just waiting
on the sun to summon
the next shift or thunder
to stop? Whichever
sacrifice comes first.
JORDANS
Copped the new
Jordans today hadn’t
planned on any excess
hadn’t planned on being
this type of capitalist
even if I was trying to please
my growing child trying to find
some shoes she will age
out of before the year lays
itself to rest the two-hundred-
dollar tag on the Jordans
is not what I need not what
this responsible family man
budgeted for and I don’t
really have it but I woke up
as black as my own bed
so maybe I do
have it maybe I want
for nothing until I cross
the street or I drive my car
faster than I should every alley
can be a speed trap
and becoming nothing
is a very real possibility
and maybe I don’t care what
I can afford when I’m just hoping
to be here
when the package arrives
HAUNT
After watching too much TV, the little girl
is convinced the house is haunted, every
creaking step or a door finally loosening
its metal clasp to give way to light, it
keeps hidden on the other side a new
specter with a new name. We have a family
of them now, which used to scare her,
but now only amuses her. Made-up stories
about who died first and who must be
fighting depending on what noises
crescendo before bedtime. And this is cute,
I guess, as she says bye to them as we
leave for school in the morning and I
arrive at work later, making enough noise
to barely be noticed and my colleagues often
speak about me as if I were c
onjured.
IN THE EVENT THEY FIND ME FLOATING
There is never a time when my daughter
doesn’t overfeed the fish. I say, Just a pinch,
love, and her small fingers always squeeze more
than necessary. The flakes cover the surface
like an oil slick. I try my best to warn her
about the dangers of too much, I warn her
that this is one of the ways we can hurt the fish.
She does not know that I do not know how
to tell if a fish is in pain. I only know how to kill
one. I wish I knew more about what can bend,
I wish I knew how to slow blood without halting.
I never wanted to be God, but I don’t know
what else to call that hunger. At dinner,
my daughter moves her food around until
they are countries. I have slightly burnt the chicken
nuggets, so she has relocated them.
For the potatoes I did better. They are eaten
first and then everything and then
there is nothing except what used to be. I try
to remind her to feed the fish when we are eating or
else I’ll forget. The fish will starve,
hurting for a while, maybe. I wouldn’t know
until I could no longer do anything about it.
My daughter has named the fish—Starry, Beta
& Goldie, though two of them are golden.
She says she can tell who is who, but I don’t
know that I believe her. Tonight, I don’t
remember if they have been fed. I choose
not to feed them, which I claim as the choice
to not overfeed them. And maybe they have
gone hungry and hungrier still, until they have
become ravenous with want, until the morning
comes and I choose an end to their suffering
if suffering is still an option by then.
WAVES
At the beach where the Atlantic
kisses our feet, my daughter
asks me what the ocean will
bring to shore, like it has
secrets it holds on to. I say
under my breath, Probably slaves,
and I know this is me at my
most cynical, a trait my child
shouldn’t need to be helped with.
I bury my tongue behind my teeth
like so many shells before
me and remember what lessons