What My Mother Does Not Tell Us

My father’s secrets. His face on the walls

of a fallen house. His ears tracing the teary

voice of my mother. His life opened like a jar.

His shadow walking an empty room, searching

for where everything that remains speaks of love.

My father’s hands on a table full of old things.

His unfinished manuscripts wrapped by cobwebs.

The contents of his heart the day he left home,

how he was shot like a dog, and how he was buried

without songs nor flowers, the image of his body

hanging in my mother’s head.